notes:
+ done for a prompt on tumblr! anon asked for: "Red/Boxer new year fluff"
+ happy new year all you all! \o/
It'd been a long time since Cloudbank had a designated New Year's Day, and it had taken dedicated campaigning to bump the event into the foreseeable future.
For weeks, the OVC terminals chimed and flashed enthusiastically at passerby. Every time Red ordered flatbread, the order form was accompanied by an image of Sybil gesturing vigorously at a ballot in the sidebar.
- Vote for when Cloudbank should hold the greatest celebration of the year!
- A party that'll last in your memory forever!
- A day to leave the past behind, and bring Cloudbank into a brighter and more beautiful future!
It took surprisingly long to reach consensus, but as soon as the date was set, Sybil began nailing down the details.
"I'd love for you to perform there, Red," she said, eyes shining, and Red shook off another shuddery double-take. Red.
It had been a while since someone had called her that with any frequency. (A particular someone, in fact.) Now everyone was starting to use it.
"Who's on the guest list?" Red found herself asking.
"Everybody! Well, everybody who's anybody," Sybil amended.
Would he count, she wondered, as "anybody"?
"It could be a sort of debut for you," Sybil continued, and Red almost laughed. Since when was she not a "debuted" Musician?
But Sybil's excitement couldn't be dampened.
"It sounds," Red told her, "like a lot of fun," and she accepted the gig.
:::
There were few that remembered Cloudbank's last New Year, and it was from them that all the traditional cues were learned, and embellished.
Champagne's important, they'd said, and the plazas were filled with fountains frothing gold fizz.
There should also be a clock that counts down to midnight, they'd added, a big one so everyone can see, and within the day it was rendered and set atop a spire by the Empty Set.
And once the hour strikes, they'd concluded, you should have someone to kiss.
That last one was something that Sybil couldn't control as easily, though that didn't stop her from trying.
"I hate to ask you last minute, but maybe you can sing romantic things for your set?" Sybil asked. And then, when Red grimaced: "What? What's the matter?"
"Romance hasn't always worked out for me," she explained, and Sybil chuckled and took her shrugging arm.
"Well, that was the past! I'm sure the New Year will bring you something — new. Better."
It's time for change! the posters encouraged. New year, new resolutions, new friends, new self, new Cloudbank!
Red made her way to the stage's center, looked out over the crowd, met the gazes of people whose faces were obscured by festive headwear. She smiled, and people clapped, and someone whooped, "Red!"
She curled her fingers around the mike, and inhaled.
:::
It wasn't that she disliked romantic songs.
But — like some of her other music — her love songs always seemed to either miss the audience, or bruise it.
Cloudbank adored big, whirlwind love. Love that ravaged like a storm, leveling everything that had come before it, love that stole all the breath in your body and set what remained on fire. Cloudbank loved love that was like nothing that had ever existed. Cloudbank loved love that changed everything.
Sitting together, walking together, without any words said. Finding each other in quiet rooms. Surprising each other with favorite foods, accumulating a repertoire of years-old jokes that made sense to no one else — these were all the things Cloudbank would never call love.
Friendship, maybe. But not love.
Maybe, Red had been telling herself recently, they were right.
:::
Red stepped down from the stage to heavy, heady applause, and lost herself in the crowd before Sybil could find her and try to get her to sing something more storm-like.
It was easy, at least, to join the rest of the festivities. One wall of the Empty Set had been truncated, left open to a broad and crowded plaza. From the Set's hollow spilled light-studded carpets, and webs of glowing lanterns, and wobbly, dog-sized bubbles that meandered across the city and spilled glitter on you if you popped them.
"Red," someone called out, "was that all? It was so beautiful, I hope there will be an encore later tonight," and Red shook their hand and drew her shawl over her shoulders.
"Red," someone called next, "I didn't get it, but it was lovely, I have some ideas for you if you'd like," and Red signed an autograph and searched for a pair of feather-framed glasses to wear.
"Red," someone else called, "will you perform at my festival next week," and Red bowed her head and made some noises and found a big hat with a veil that trailed to her shoulders.
Someone still found her then, someone that tapped her shoulder, and she wouldn't have bothered turning around at all if she hadn't heard them say, "Hi."
Her pulse picked up, felt like it went doubletime to the tick tock of the clock above them. She turned. Sure enough, there he was — jacket and everything.
"Hey," she replied, grinning. And then, before she realized what she was saying: "I was waiting for you."
"Yeah?" His eyebrow cocked. "I guess it is a pretty dull party." Boxer swung his arm indicatively at the champagne fountains, the giant clock, the buffet tables and servers, and at a giant bubble, which subsequently burst sparkles onto his right arm. Red laughed, and her arms made a short jerking motion, something that started and then stopped being a hug once she realized what she was doing.
Where had that come from? They were friends, but not really hugging friends. Right? Maybe? Were they?
She couldn't remember when this had started mattering.
Boxer's eyes flicked toward her arms, and she rubbed them as if she was cold.
"Have you had a bite yet?" she asked. He shook his head, and she led him to a buffet table, where they collected food and drinks.
"I heard you," he said casually, after swallowing a scallop. "Up there, I mean. You're amazing." Red felt her face warm. "And, you caught the ear of the great Sybil Reisz, which means you're A-list now, huh? Red?"
Red snorted. "That hasn't stopped getting weird yet."
"Yeah? Figured you'd be used to it by now."
"Not from anyone but you! Boxer," she added slyly, and he rolled his eyes, not unkindly.
"You definitely came out with the better name," he said, and she whacked him a bit, with her glass.
"Gonna have to do better than that," he told her. "Maybe try out a music stand from the orchestra pit over there."
"You're never going to let that one go."
"Never," he agreed.
She couldn't think of anything to say after that, and neither could he, it seemed. Red swallowed. For too long, they just stood there, weight shifting, with limp smiles and eyes shifting away from each other. Red felt her heart speed, with apprehension. What happened? This wasn't normal. Usually, seeing him was so comfortable, so stress-free.
"It's nice to see you," she tried. "I'm glad you could sneak in."
"If by 'sneaking' you mean 'just walking in,'" he said dryly.
"Oh — well — you know what I mean. I just haven't seen you since...I just feel like I haven't seen you since...forever," Red finished, helplessly.
Boxer swirled the fluid in his glass. For a second she thought he might make another quip — "Is that how long a couple weeks is, now? Forever?" — but instead he just agreed, soberly. "Yeah. Me too."
At least this time he was in one piece. He picked at his bandages, and she decided not to ask about it.
She tried to think about something else to talk about. In the end, he came up with something himself, pointing at one of the nearby displays.
What, asked one of them, are your New Year's Resolutions?
"'Resolutions?'" he said. "What're those?"
"Something you promise that you'll accomplish in the new year," Red explained. "Or something that you want more of."
He snorted. "What's the point of that? Who even knows when the new year's gonna end?"
"I think it's a good idea! It's sort of like — like casting a vote on yourself, on how you want to change. And," Red added, for no reason she could immediately think of, "it makes a good, clear border. Between what things were, I mean. And what they could be."
He eyed her. Swirled his glass again. "Do you have any Resolutions?"
Red considered, sipping her drink and then copying his swirling motion. These drinks were pretty good at keeping you occupied. "Well," she admitted, "for at least one of my Resolutions, I was thinking that it'd be….it'd be really nice to see you more often. Like — like the old days. We saw each other all the time, back then."
Sip. Swirl, swirl, swirl. She gazed across the festivities as the silence stretched.
"I don't think that'd be a good idea," he said finally, and the laugh Red made herself make was startled and strained.
"Yeah," she mumbled hastily, "yeah, I didn't — I mean — obviously, I just —"
"I mean," he interrupted, "unless you're willing to find our old Instructor to stick us back in detention for days on end. I think your view of the good ol' days is a little too rosy."
"Yeah," Red said. "Yeah."
Silence.
"That was a joke," he said.
"Haha," Red replied.
Sip. Swirl, swirl, swirl.
Maybe her view of those times was a little too rosy, she found herself thinking. She'd always looked forward to seeing him, but recently — and especially now — being with him just felt...lacking.
And wanting.
And as the minutes passed, she was becoming painfully sure that he didn't feel quite the same way.
She felt him staring at her. She downed the rest of her glass and set it, and her empty plate, on a table.
"I think I'm going to head home," she said, through a buzz that had failed to make her feel less unpleasant.
"Already?" he asked. "You're not going to wait till midnight?"
She made a smile at the ground. "Afraid not."
"How about a dance? Just one song?" Boxer set his glass and plate down too. "C'mon. For old times' sake."
"Since when did our old times ever involve dancing?" she wondered, but his hand was extended out to her now, fingers spread and beckoning. Against her better judgment, she wanted to take it, and did.
:::
Boxer's idea of dancing turned out to involve jerky motions alternating between exaggerated pantomimes of the people around them. Red's own attempts at dancing soon degenerated into doubling over laughing, and doing her best to one-up him on imitations of people. She copied, perfectly, the sinuous motion of the swan on someone's hat; and he had an impeccable rendition of a nearby person's gyrations, though his version was somehow even more enthusiastic than the original.
The end of the song came with an ostentatious announcement of the time, the hours and minutes and seconds left until the New Year, and they stayed on the floor for another song, and another, and another. They left only when they were exhausted, to fill their panting mouths with more champagne.
"Look," Boxer whispered in her ear, pointing. There was a server distributing palm-sliced slices of flatbread, and Red gave an uncharacteristic squeal. They chased the server around until the platter was empty, and then decided sedately that Jan's was better.
She started feeling warm, so she left her shawl somewhere, and the hat too, but kept the glasses. This time when people approached her she responded with an easy vigor and brightness, passed out her contact information, and more than once she said goodbye and looked up at Boxer only to see him already looking back.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said, the first time.
"Really, it's nothing," he said, the second time.
The third time, he said: "Give it a rest! I'm just happy for you, alright?"
"Happy! About what?"
"That — that you made it. You're a singer, Red. Look at all these people that want you around."
In his words she heard a familiar undertone and she said, "I like it when you're around too, you know."
And instead of his usual shrug or eyeroll, he said, "Yeah. I know."
The music slowed to a languorous, honeyed crawl. Against her better judgment, her head buzzy now not so much with alcohol as with something else more pleasant, she extended her hand out to him, fingers spread and beckoning. He took it, and they walked out to a spot on the floor, took a place in the gentle sway. His hands rested on her waist, easy, and her hands linked behind his back, easy, easy. No glancing sidelong this time, for others to copy; this time they were just themselves.
She pressed her face against his chest, between the lapels of his jacket. Against one ear she heard his steady pulse; against the other, the tick of the clock. He was warm, and solid, and comfortable. She closed her eyes and felt as he lifted his arm to her shoulders, felt as his hand pushed her hair behind her ear. His voice stirred her bangs.
"Are you feeling better?"
What are you talking about, she considered saying. I'm fine.
But he knew her. Knew her well enough to understand what she meant, when she responded not with words, but with a light squeeze.
"I'm glad," he said. He didn't ask what had been wrong. Maybe, she thought with mingled hope and horror, he had guessed that, too.
She felt the song ending before it did, heard its strings begin to keen and keel, felt disappointment knot in her chest. They'd part, probably, when the music was over, when the context of contact faded.
She decided she'd wait for him to let go first. But he didn't. His hands dropped, but it was only to take hers.
"Three minutes left until the New Year!" announced someone on the loudspeaker — Sybil, Red realized. Red looked up at the clock, whose borders and hands where flashing frenetically. Servers were coming around not with platters now, but baskets brimming with colorful devices.
"If you don't have a popper yet, grab one!" Sybil encouraged. "And a partner, too!"
"You pull the string on the popper when the New Year comes," Red explained. "And the partner's for kissing, apparently."
"Yeah," he said. "I know."
He let a server pass by without obtaining a popper.
"Two minutes!"
"I think I have a Resolution," he said.
"Oh? What is it?"
"Well…this is the New Year, right? A...how did you describe it? A separation between what was and could be?"
"I think I remember something like that," Red said.
"Right. So…anyway, your Resolution sounded alright. But to be honest, I can't really get behind seeing each other all the time. At least not in the 'just the way we always used to be' sort of way."
"One minute!"
"So," he said, and didn't continue. But she knew him. Knew him well enough to understand what he meant, when he continued not with words, but with a light squeeze.
She couldn't help it; she blushed, and laughed.
"Thirty seconds!"
He drew her close. "Can I?" he asked against her ear.
"Yes," she breathed back.
The crowd was pressing around them, were shouting down the seconds, eyes wide and reflecting the clock's light.
"Five! Four!"
Boxer removed the feathery glasses she was still wearing.
"Three! Two!"
He cupped his hand around her left cheek, and she leaned her head against it, curled her hand around his knuckles.
"One!"
He bent toward her. His mouth met hers, gently, briefly, and the charge that went through her wasn't uncomfortably strange, as she had feared, but instead distressingly right. He straightened quickly, shyly, with a nervous lick of lips, and the instant he did, she leaped at him, arms constricting his neck. He yelled in surprise as she kissed him again, again, again, each time deeper than the last. She felt him smile as he wrapped his arms around her body and lifted her up, off her feet and against him.
When she came to, when Boxer set her back on her feet, she felt dizzy, in a good way. Confetti was caught in the strands of their hair, was still falling down on them and the other celebrants of Cloudbank. The sky was silver and gold.
"Happy New Year," he told her, maybe a little unnecessarily.
"Happy New Year," she agreed.
"Let's spend it together," he said, "however long it ends up being," and that sounded just fine with her.