I don't own Frozen.
"Are you ready?" Anna whispered.
"No."
"Are you nervous?"
"I'm trembling."
"Well, at least we have incentive to make it flawless. You gave the audio tech the recording?"
She watched Jane's throat tighten in the lackluster space below the stage. The woman gulped and pulled her arms across her abdomen, another default move that signified extreme nervousness.
"Yes, I gave it to him."
"Just repeat everything I say. Remember, it's just a story, twenty minutes of our lives to tell a story," Anna said.
Anna touched the EP at her ear and yanked at one of the multiple straps holding all of her girly bits in place. There was enough makeup on her face to make a drag queen shudder, and enough adrenaline in her veins for her to dead lift a MINI Coop. They stood below in what might once have been an orchestra pit, now sealed over to give the performers more room to move. She could hear floor boards creaking overhead, tiny streams of light fighting through cracks and slicing the thick gloom like a scalpel. A snowy television monitor was flipped on, static scratchy against outdated speakers.
"You should get ready for your entrance," Anna said, turning toward Jane.
"I— I take it back. I'm so scared. I can't do this."
"Sure you can, I know you can. You can do anything if you want it enough."
"Is that your motto?" Jane asked.
"It's what I say to… live with myself afterwards."
"Don't put it like that."
"Fine. Just… talk to me. Don't pay attention to anyone else, just… respond to me."
"The sun is the leader," Jane said, all monotone and no tease.
"Yes, but you're the one with extrasensory abilities. Go on, I expect to see you on a rope in a few minutes."
"Tell me again how to… how can I—"
"Turn it off? Up here?" Anna asked, swiping a blind hand near Jane's head. She didn't want to touch the girl for fear of marring her own face paint, but she needed to give her some form of reassurance. Anna stepped closer and wrapped her in a hug of solidarity. For her, it was love; one-sided, but she was not bitter. If Jane was scared, it was Anna's duty to temper the fright. She could moon over feelings unreturned when they weren't about to take their clothes off for who knows how many strangers.
"None of it counts," Anna whispered. "Whatever we do on that stage, it stays on that stage. That's not us. Those are performers who have never known… will never know a friendship like we have. I don't want this to interfere with the progress you've— that we've made, Jane. Right now, this is me. This is A, and nothing that happens up there changes that."
Jane nodded into her shoulder then withdrew, slinking out of the dim stage underbelly as quietly as a forgotten yesterday.
Anna turned her attention to the bleary monitor trained on the performance space overhead. Frollo swooped onto the stage, a sophisticated theatre-in-the-round set up with one-sided paneled glass that allowed the patrons to view the show, but didn't allow the performers to see just who they were performing for. Client discretion, and all that.
Confidential voyeurism.
"Good evening," Frollo intoned, fingers steepled at his chest. "I have called you all for this exclusive performance tonight, an exceptional experience that I guarantee will be worth your while." Frollo circled the hexagonal stage in measured, deliberate steps. "Everyone here has a peculiar standard, an undeniable quality of… taste," Frollo nearly hissed. "I myself have reserved a booth for the evening, as I've witnessed just a, glimpse, of what will occur." Frollo was smiling to himself, mouth line wide but closed like a viper. Anna half-expected his tongue to dart out and taste the sex in the air. "It is, truly, an ardent, virginal debut.
"No eyes other than yours have seen this show in Europe. No ears have heard their words, listened to their… mmm… pleas, their cries, nor has anyone bared witness to this unlikely consummation, the love affair between the moon and the sun. Madame Rose and her partner Lily are here to grant you an enticing, entertaining evening. They will prepare your palate, whet your appetite, and further delicacies may be sampled as the night wears on. The second half of your payments will be due after the performance. Keep that in mind as you… enjoy yourselves. Without further ado—"
Frollo bowed his head and the lights went down, signaling the cue Anna had been dreading since Jane had first mentioned her intention to fly to Amsterdam. Only this time, Anna would not be taking the stage alone.
Comforted. Regretful.
The sound guy played the first cue of a rooster crowing, and Anna stepped onto the platform. A trap door slid open above her head and she was raised on a hydraulic lift to center stage, Judge Frollo certainly not skimping on production value.
Let his avarice and lust be his downfall.
The lights came up, soft goldenrod beams against shiny maple floorboards. There was a metal pole at the center of the stage, and four ropes strategically draped through the rafters, subdividing the stage into four hemispheres.
The rooster crowed again and Anna blinked against the stage lights, raising her arms as she yawned and stretched.
"Mmm, good morning," she said, to no one in particular. She trudged around the pole at the stage's center, giggling and pantomiming flower picking, running her hands along her sheathed arms, over her torso, around the edges of her face. She began in a yellow sundress, hair brushed back in an intricate updo, mustard ribbons running through one of the accent braids lining the back bun. Her heels were unnecessarily high, but it forced a saunter, a poise, and an air of luxuriant assuredness that Anna needed to become Madame Rose. To become the woman who would play the 'Sun'.
To be the person Jane needed her to be, to get through this ordeal.
Desolate string music poured through a loudspeaker system and she continued to amble, aimlessly, around the pole. She touched herself innocently, skipping fingers over her sheer long sleeves and twirling the end of a loose ribbon. Anna leaned her full body against the pole, grasping onto it behind her as she had the slack line tree trunk.
"Want to know a secret?" she said to the one-sided windows.
It's all empty. There's no one here. Just pretend there's no one here.
"I'll tell you. I am terribly lonely, watching over the Earth. Shining everyday, burning so brightly. And every moment I shine I'm really dying, a little more, dimming infinitesimally, but no one notices me."
Why does that have to be true?
"No one notices me," a voice echoed her.
Anna feigned confusion and jerked her head around. The spotlight on her at center stage was powerful, bright and stinging and hot, sweat already forming under her arms and in the webbing between her gloved fingers.
"Who's there?" Anna asked.
"There."
"No, who are you?"
"Are you?"
"Where are you?"
"Where."
"Why must you make this so difficult?"
There was movement overhead, the disembodied voice no longer bodiless. Jane perched atop the middle pole like a nightingale in shadow. Blue shafts of light hit her pale form from below, creating a strategic lit gradient of cerulean haze that percolated into familiar sheens of gold and daffodil from top to bottom.
"Difficult…" Jane said, melancholic.
"Oh!" Anna exclaimed. "I've heard of you…"
"You," Jane said, and reached down toward Anna. Jane had worn textured gloves to aid in the climbing, but the rest of her arms were bare and scintillating.
"Are you the moon?"
Jane nodded and slid down slightly, her legs wrapped securely around the pole. Her controlled descent was acrobatic, and she was tantalizing. Anna was wilder, but charming. Opposites and contraries and paradoxes.
"The moon," Jane echoed.
"I've never met you before."
"Never."
"Why must you repeat me?"
"Repeat me."
"Can you come closer so I can see you?"
"You come."
"I asked you first."
"I asked you."
"This is getting us nowhere."
Jane inched downwards again, slipping against the pole and into the more revealing light of the stage, soundless, contained, a blue gel filter still shining on her airy position.
"Us," Jane nearly moaned it, clutching the pole and warping her body around it. She tucked her head against the cylindrical metal and reached desperately for Anna, whimpering in her failures. Anna faced the pole and then thrust her body toward it, letting her hand linger against the smooth metal as she drew it steadily upward. Her palm finally flattened against the silver, but her fingers couldn't reach, Jane's toes at least two feet out of range. Anna jumped and clung to the pole, then slipped down, her movements weighted, retarded. She clawed at a surface with no traction.
Anna had done Jane's makeup and had selected the costumes. But seeing Jane 'in character', presented for her on stage like some holy offering... it made her burn, made her flare, made her truly understand the longing the sun might just harbor for an unattainable moon.
They had chosen muted blues, all to enhance the moon's stark contrast to the sun's jovial yellows. Jane's first layer was little more than a slip, an unassuming square neckline and silk material cinching at Jane's waistline and then flowing down, down, calflength with slits on both sides. The only problem was, the slits went up to her hip bones, and Jane still had both legs wrapped around that pole.
Pale, muscular legs everywhere.
Jane had somehow managed to control the lighting: she wore a pair of short white gloves with pearl buttons at the wrist. They disguised most of her gestures and finger flicks, but Jane had attached some sort of bleached sandpaper grip to the palms and fingers to better negotiate the pole and ropes. Lights on Anna burned as the pale blue around Jane shone a bit brighter, enhancing the polarized nature of the performance.
The music volume increased. Violin lament.
Anna took a step to the right and Jane planted her feet against the left side of the pole. She extended her body outwards at an angle, holding herself in an almost standing position using little more than body strength and physics. Human flag. Anna's banner. Anna reached her hands skyward and Jane retreated, groping behind her to find one of the black ropes.
"Wait!" Anna said, still glued to the bottom center. "Where are you going?"
"Going."
"Please, don't. I'm so lonely."
"Lonely."
"Why… why do you repeat me?"
"Repeat."
Anna raised an arm and Jane did the same.
Another reach up, another retreat.
Anna tilted her head to the side and Jane matched her. Anna's lights went up and Jane's reflected, the seesaw of onstage luminescence continuing.
"So you're my—"
"You're my."
"Mirror."
"Mirror."
Anna pointed her index finger and placed it on her chin. Jane mimicked her. She traced her jaw leisurely, smiling as Jane did the same. Her finger abandoned her face and swirled her own ear, veering down her neck and leaping over her collarbone. Jane copied her movements, yet in the replication, had transferred her weight from the pole and swung onto one of the hanging black ropes. Anna remained in the center and observed Jane's progression, her eyes never leaving the blonde as she moved from rope to rope, not ape-like, but not entirely human, either.
As she circled, no, orbited Anna, Jane twisted and writhed against the ropes in maneuvers that would have Cirque du Soleil jaws dropping. She was magician, costume never catching, gloves never slipping. Just a body, twirling. She was a sprite: lithe, sinful, lecherous, limber. And to Anna she was criminal and constellation, heavenly. Her body somersaulted in midair and dangled, inverted, for what felt like months. Jane then trickled down softer than mist in adolescent autumn. When her foot hit the stage's edge she dipped forward into a front walk-over, a showcase of scissoring bare leg and undergarments. That was the same move Jane had used at the Carazolla showcase, so many lifetimes ago. Jane righted herself and stared at Anna, pupils navy in their dilation. She dragged her feet behind her as she stalked around the stage, blue lights and pale skin circling a yellow hub. She extended her legs regally, développé into arabesque into drooping pivot, a strut of smothering sexuality.
"You're beautiful," Anna stage whispered.
"Beautiful," came the reply.
Hypnosis.
"I wish... I wish to feel you. Touch me."
"Touch me," Jane begged, and ran her own hands over her neck, her face.
Anna reached an arm out toward Jane and Jane lifted hers in Anna's direction, their fingers swimming uselessly in the open air before them. As Anna slowly dropped her arm, Jane's fell.
Resigned synchronicity.
"I want you."
"Want."
"To shine."
"Shine."
"I want…"
"Want."
"… to be moon kissed."
Jane stopped her rotation and squared her shoulders in Anna's direction. She did not waver. No blink. No twitch.
"Kissed."
Anna touched a hand to her cheek and Jane did the same: they ran their indexes and middle fingers over the dips of their respective dimples; over arched noses; around closed eyelids; along curving jaw lines; on sensitive, parted lips.
"Imagine me—" Anna commanded.
"Imagine."
"On you."
"You."
"Near you."
"You."
"A part of you."
"You," Jane pleaded.
"I'll burn—" Anna said, and took hold of the center pole. She twisted on the balls of her feet and spun around, her lemon dress ballooning and then falling as she unhooked a hidden clasp at her sternum. The blanket of yellow dropped and pooled at her ankles and Anna continued circling the center, picking her feet up out of the garment and stepping just a little higher, swaying her hips with more than natural vigor. Two hands on the pole, and she swung herself around, head arched back as the lights scrutinized her and heated her already searing skin. She felt the pole between her thighs and she squeezed her quadriceps together for better support, eyelids shutting as she concentrated on her own revolution.
She was in a blush-and-ochre corset and tights combo now, fishnets stamping diamond patterns into her legs and the paneled boning around her stomach dampening her breaths. Her garter belt and clasps were digging into her skin like a lover's nails, and Anna was having difficulty distancing herself from the situation. The long gloves were palmless, again for a better grip on the pole. They tickled the crease of her elbow, requesting to be discarded like the dress before them. She rolled her neck slowly (though that had not been in the choreography) and brought her hand to her own nape, raking her felt-covered fingers over the protruding vertebrae and scratching over the curve of her shoulder to where the top of her floating breast met the fabric of the corset.
Anna watched as Jane copied her movements, the indentions from the other girls' fingers on pale flesh barely visible on stage. Jane had followed her, though the movement was unplanned. Anna turned her head to her left shoulder, eyes glued to Jane. She kissed her own body and then licked her freckled skin, lips and chin dragging along her shoulder due to her short neck and the awkward angle. She felt her own spit in the tiny divot between her bottom lip and chin. Jane followed, so obediently, and the blonde's saliva glistened on her lower mouth.
"And you will reflect," Anna finished.
Jane's turn now. The first wave.
Jane continued to circle the margins of the rounded stage, but likewise rotated in her own circle, an orbit within a revolution. And in her spins, her thin blue dress fell away. First one thick strap, and then the other, peeled off her frame like a banana skin. Strips of gauzy material trailed in her wake.
Soft moondust.
She wore no stockings; her legs had been rubbed down in a gritty white rosin prior to the show to strengthen her hold on poles and ropes alike. But draped around her hips was the remainder of her dress: a short miniskirt with a jagged hem that was knotted at her left hip, the slits still riding high on her legs. The cut displayed several square inches of creamy skin better suited for a lotion advert than tawdry stripteases. Beneath it, the stringed ties of a midnight-blue thong peeked out coquettishly. And her torso: heavens, her torso. The bodice glittered in anemic aquas and indigos, but when the lights hit her just there, the sequins exploded and refracted, casting star patterns into the darkness outside of her spotlight. It was nothing so tacky as a disco ball, but prismic, faceted, a diamond perfectly cut. Her hair was up in an intricate bun, but no ribbons, no accessories.
I want it down. I want too see her loose, bare, and unbound.
Jane was there, following Anna's lead.
At Anna's mercy.
Anna rolled her shoulders this time, and felt something shift. Internally, eternally, in her mind, in her gut, her heart, her lungs, her liver, her kidneys, her glands. Name an organ (vestigial, central), it was impacted.
Lust.
Wicked, consuming lust, the vice Frollo pandered to perverted millionaires, had walloped Anna onstage. Distance and compartmentalization had been easier once upon another time, separation from a 'character' simpler because there was less at stake. But now, Anna wanted to be Madame Rose. Wanted to be the Sun. Wanted to be able to perform salacious acts with Jane because it was her job, dammit, and if she didn't make it good it could get them thrown into sexual slavery until their bodies gave out like aged car engines.
Sure, let me think that's why I'm doing this. Like I'm not enjoying every flounce, every twitch and nude swath of epidermis.
So she decided to give herself over to her demons.
Anna died and A emerged, damn the consequences.
And resisting is just… so… hard.
A took another deep breath, and everything was transmuted: the world didn't melt away because they were not of the world. It was just the Sun, the Moon, and vast space between them. And if the Sun couldn't circumvent that space, couldn't overcome that distance, she would use what little power she still had to receive pleasure from her closest friend. From the only other celestial body that could match her splendor. She knew the Moon was inconsistent; she best capitalize on her opportunity before the gibbous waned and retreated behind the stars into a separate galaxy.
A raised her arms, bent at the elbows, and began rubbing the back of her neck, her trapezius muscle, the straggling hairs and ribbons below her updo. She twisted and petted her skull and neck, wrenching her hair free and running a searching hand through the tresses. She latched onto a ribbon and tugged, the silk hugging the ridges of her profile as it slid over head, skin, and fabric. She dropped it, and her body fell against the pole at center stage, groaning at the stinging sensation of releasing her tightened follicles. She gathered up a lock and began fingering it with both hands, biting her lip as she turned to Jane.
"Your turn."
"Turn."
A smirked at Jane's cleverness, twirling slowly as Jane set about freeing her own hair. She unwrapped the convoluted braid like a turban, then twisted the bottom tie with flawless fingers. Instead of raking her hands through from crown to end as A had done, Jane meticulously unwound the plait, following the pattern of over and under and over once more, until only platinum waves remained. Jane's handful of fingers brushed back layered bangs from her forehead, and A wagered Diana herself would have been envious. Jane bowed indecently, her nose to her knees, then arched her back up, her hair flying behind her like wheat stalks in wind.
A was bold in her actions. She touched her own body; she watched Jane touch herself. And as she watched, A imagined the touches were traded, exchanged, blonde hair against freckles and tanned fingers clenching lean muscles. She walked slowly in a tiny circle at center, while Jane walked the opposite direction on the exterior. Jane's pace was quicker on the outskirts, but it didn't stop her from mirroring every one of A's movements. A was almost positive their breathing was synched.
She hoped their hearts were.
In the back of her mind, she knew she needed to stop with the teasing and get to something more substantial and show-worthy. But she could feel herself growing wet simply by looking; what further torture would self-gratuitous touching and wanton leering bring?
I execute every movement wantonly, because I want/only her.
A glared-stared-flared at Jane, her fingers inching up from hips to waist to (finally) cup the underside of her corseted breasts. Jane's fingers dodged sequins and she did the same, though A noticed the other girl had quite the handful. She wished her hands were numb, wished to feel phantom fingers as opposed to her own, for then she could imagine Jane, beautiful, aloof Jane, squeezing and pinching her. For a time there was paralysis, inertia of the moment; because A could hear Jane panting through the EP, could see her mouth gaping, chest expanding into her gloved fingers.
I want those fingers. Those hands.
Those powerful, formidable hands linked to destruction. But also capable of intricacies, of creation. Hands that literally gave her life.
A squeezed herself. Jane's inhale melted into a gasp.
After some heavy fondling, A broke script and withdrew her hands from her chest, looping around the center pole and tugging each finger of her long glove with her teeth. She slipped the piece from her forearm and started on the other, relishing the feel of fabric brushing the hairs on her skin, goosebump reforestation.
"Gloves," A breathed.
At the command, Jane hesitated. This wasn't supposed to happen until the very end, their 'big finish'. In uncomfortable situations, Jane tended to spark. It happened infrequently, if A was with her, but A had witnessed it and felt the results of a distressed Jane. It was heart-stopping.
Literally.
With trembling hands, Jane unbuttoned the pearls, slipped her gloves off. Less ado because hers were not long, were not meant to be sexual. The viewers didn't realize that this was Jane's true disrobing. A knew now, with those hands exposed, that Jane felt more naked than she would once the rest of the pieces started falling away. Bare, vulnerable, condemned. She could feel Jane fighting to keep her eyes open, to keep her body still, not to shimmy up that rope and escape through the rafters.
She wanted comforting.
A shut her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair, tucking it behind her own ear. She placed her hands on her own cheek and soothed herself, hoping that Jane could feel her care across the bridge of space they weren't allowed to cross.
But we've got to get on with it.
A opened her eyes but Jane still had them closed. She needed to get her attention. So with a flat back and locked knees A dropped to the floor and banged her fists into the boards, then drug her hands up the interior of her legs.
A watched Jane watch her, the blonde's eyes widening further and pupils fully blown. Jane mimicked, though stilted, movements more nervous than natural. A marionette, playing at being a real girl.
A rubbed the inside of her thighs in light circles, her legs coming back together as she fell against the pole once more. She brought one hand overhead and gripped the pole, letting her knees buckle as she slid her palm over her covered crotch.
Jane gripped the black rope hanging in that section of the stage with her left hand and her other disappeared into the apex of her legs, her skirt bunching beneath her wrist. Her knees bent and her arm held her weight, but she twisted, in feigned (or real?) bliss. A made a show of moving her palm beneath her legs, trying to keep a hold on the performance, trying to withstand the sight of Jane shaking on the rope. A groaned and then stood, hands peeling away the panels of her corset, leaving her abdomen bare but breasts and bottom still covered.
The music shifted from tragic to relentless. Strings gave way to bass beats, technoesque music with lasers simulating falling and exploding meteorites. It was now the song of stars, of solar flares and moon beams prospering despite their distance.
Jane attended to her own attire. The skirt flew across the stage and revealed a navy thong. Her bodice seemed to shatter into sequined streams, leaving Jane— the moon, with a swatch of cobalt fabric running horizontally over peaked bosoms, pinched at her cleavage with a diamond.
Her star.
A strutted about the center and touched herself: stomach breasts hair shoulders neck thighs hips crotch lips more. She broke her central position and took one step toward the outskirts of the stage. At that moment, the right strap of her bra snapped off and the lights dimmed slightly. Jane had conversely taken a step toward the center, and her steel blue filter shifted toward lit sapphire. The left strap of her bustier was no longer present.
A continued circling in her interior orbit, sweating now, from the stage lights and unquenchable arousal. She cried out, nonsensical, when her own nails raked over her cleavage, over the scar Jane had left on the beach in St. John. It was so tiny, barely there, really, the shape of a smiling crescent.
It had taken A weeks to understand the figure, realization dawning one evening in Louisiana when Anna had offered to give Jane a manicure. It had been one of her nails, which Jane usually kept clipped close. When she had shocked her on the night sand, Jane hadn't just touched her: Jane dug into her skin, clung to her, attached and marked her with scar and jolt. It was an undeniable physical connection to an other that now labeled Anna as someone Jane had saved: the resurrected conwoman. The mark was faint but present, and it was scorching.
A needed to get this costume off, needed for this whole farce to end… but more than that, she needed to touch Jane.
A took another step toward the outside of the stage and Jane marched inward one foot, the remaining straps from their costume bras snapping from their shoulders as lights continued to dim, and bulbs began to spark. A made unintelligible noises and Jane was whining, stomping to the insistent beat in clockwise and counter circles, every time missing each other's outstretched fingers by a hairsbreadth. A palmed her breast aggressively and stretched another arm toward Jane, and Jane stretched her arm toward A. Their fingertips kissed, and more sparks from the lights overhead fell in showers like Perseid residue.
After they touched, the circling patterns continued. But there was another shift: A descended, and Anna reemerged, lust usurped by misery. As a con, as 'A', she could perform without feeling. Do it because she had to, because she liked being naughty. But Anna, the real Anna, she still had a conscience. As much as A wanted to get off on this little charade, Anna didn't want it to happen. Not like this. What if Jane didn't want it? She had been hesitant before the show began. What if this screws them over?
What if this ruins everything?
For on the next pass, she and Jane would finally meet each other. On the next pass, they would be able to touch and explore.
And on the next pass, none of it would be real.
The scar at Anna's chest prickled. Her eyes did, too. And maybe her heart.
She yelled and took the final step outward and strode briskly in her counter clockwise motion; Jane moved in, quick step speeding her own route clockwise. When they met, hands flew to the other's chests and removed the final barrier. Yellow and blue lights dwindled to darkness as the topless girls held each other, static for the first time since the show began. Sparks and strobes flew about them like winking fireflies on a Louisiana lakeside.
Anna thought they had given the viewers a tasteful yet sensual narrative: the Sun, so desperate for company, had damaged space to be with the Moon. The pair consummated their love in a sparkling meteor shower while the universe imploded. Neither night nor day could know light without the Sun and Moon's separation.
Anna also thought she would enjoy this more than she was. She had Jane here, uncovered, in her arms, and could smell the mint on her breath. But the fact that Anna was in love with her made the next part all the more tragic.
Their lips met, and Anna cried, because what should have been her first real kiss… was just another con.
Oops... My fingers slipped on my keyboard and this happened. Uhm, reviews appreciated?