A/N: So um… Not sure where this came from, except half a dozen prompts and her love/hate relationship with dance. Hope you don’t hate it. :twiddles thumbs:
He loves me. He loves me not.
Children plucked the petals from the roses, scratching fingers on the thorns. Team operatives stared with worry into another’s eyes and asked with their own, Have you lost your mind?
Loving wasn’t practical. The Database was practical.
Justus could dance. Whoever had taught him—the images she’d retrieved from Meld showed family: mother, father, sisters—had done a good job at ballroom and modest swing. Shift had done a good job at the nonmodest varieties of dance he would need to know and at teaching him how to fake it. Attraction, that is.
The Database was teaching him how to be real.
He loves me. He loves me not. There was trouble brewing in his eyes if he wasn’t faking it and the thought bothered her, and she’d never been the type to take the easy way out, so she ordered him harshly, barely biting back a curse to go with it because he didn’t like the swearing, “Justus. Stop acting.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes, but then he swung her out the way he had once with a sister, someone he loved once, laughed with freely and she went with it, danced with him with an honesty she usually reserved for Meld until for one brief moment, the haunted look left his eyes and she breathed out her tension with relief.
After, he glanced at her sidelong and asked, “You like dancing?”
“No.” She leaned up and kissed him, startling him good, then backed away to study his eyes. Safe for now. “But it’s something I can have free.”
Justus considered that. He heard her. Free. There were little tiny, but never insignificant pieces of themselves they kept beyond all of this. He leaned down, trailed one hand through her hair—he loved her hair—and whispered in her ear, “I like dancing.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Tiny Significant Pieces
Date: 2013-09-26 10:06 pm (UTC)He loves me. He loves me not.
Children plucked the petals from the roses, scratching fingers on the thorns. Team operatives stared with worry into another’s eyes and asked with their own, Have you lost your mind?
Loving wasn’t practical. The Database was practical.
Justus could dance. Whoever had taught him—the images she’d retrieved from Meld showed family: mother, father, sisters—had done a good job at ballroom and modest swing. Shift had done a good job at the nonmodest varieties of dance he would need to know and at teaching him how to fake it. Attraction, that is.
The Database was teaching him how to be real.
He loves me. He loves me not. There was trouble brewing in his eyes if he wasn’t faking it and the thought bothered her, and she’d never been the type to take the easy way out, so she ordered him harshly, barely biting back a curse to go with it because he didn’t like the swearing, “Justus. Stop acting.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes, but then he swung her out the way he had once with a sister, someone he loved once, laughed with freely and she went with it, danced with him with an honesty she usually reserved for Meld until for one brief moment, the haunted look left his eyes and she breathed out her tension with relief.
After, he glanced at her sidelong and asked, “You like dancing?”
“No.” She leaned up and kissed him, startling him good, then backed away to study his eyes. Safe for now. “But it’s something I can have free.”
Justus considered that. He heard her. Free. There were little tiny, but never insignificant pieces of themselves they kept beyond all of this. He leaned down, trailed one hand through her hair—he loved her hair—and whispered in her ear, “I like dancing.”
She smiled sincerely. “I’ll keep that in mind.”