As Usual, I Give Legionfic

[infinitepryde]

Happy birthday to joiedecombat!



They looked at each other; that is to say, she looked at him, and he looked awkward. For a few long seconds, that was all there was.

"You look good," he tried. It sounded as lame out loud as it had in his head.

A smile flickered across her face anyhow, almost too fast to see. "You look -- I don't know. Official."

"I am official," he agreed. "And so are you. Again."

"I never stopped being." She tipped her head back, chin up, defiance in the metal-clarity of her eyes. "When they tried, I just went someplace we still were."

"And got in trouble."

"So did you."

"You could've written. After you got back."

She shrugged up at him. "You could've, too. Neither of us did. So we're even." For an instant, she held herself taut as a violin string, then let her muscles slacken and ease. One of her hands came up, her gloved fingertips almost touching his sleeve. "I missed you. Are we even on that, too?"

He blinked hard; the wind felt suddenly chill on his eyelids. He pretended there was no reason. "I guess we are."

With that, her hand stopped hovering and settled on his forearm. "Good. Dance with me?"

This time the blinking was for a more usual reason. "Well, that came out of nowhere," he said, trying not to laugh. All too fast, always; his emotions never quite made sense around her. That was one of the things he'd liked. "What, right now?"

"You're off-duty. Why not?"

"I'm in uniform --"

There were arms around him and the world lurched, and he recognized it just enough to squeeze his eyes closed for the instant left before they stopped again. She put him down carefully, keeping both hands laced loosely with his arms even after. Outside the city, now, out in the wilderness. Low-lying native plants crunched quietly under his boots, yellowish leaves simulating dead grass from a distance. The red clay they grew in was dry enough not to be treacherous.

"Nobody's close enough to see," she said. "Nobody would care anyway. Except you." She tucked her head in against his shoulder, twisted it to smile up at him; it couldn't have been a comfortable position, but she held it for a moment anyhow. When he brought a hand tentatively up to her back, she straightened again. Not quite fast enough for him not to feel the bones under flesh and muscle. She wasn't starving. But she'd run everything off herself that didn't matter. Her words confirmed that a moment later: "And I'm sick of wasting time. Ten minutes from now there might be some other stupid attack, or war, or the world going strange. We've got time now. And I want to try this."

"To try this?" he repeated. "Look, just because we were usually the ones making the music doesn't mean I believe you've never --"

She made a face at him, and he felt the laughter again, but didn't let it out. "Fine. To do this. Happy?"

"We don't have music."

"It's a waltz." Her hand found his, gripped it through both their gloves with an echo of the sparky threat in her eyes. "If you can't keep a rhythm without help, I, I'll beat you up with your own guitar, so help me."

He wasn't quite sure when the last time was he'd smiled. "Assault on a police officer. You turned into a delinquent while you were gone?"

"I Was A Teen-Aged Fugitive." She grinned up toward him, and then added, "I'll sing, if you want. If you promise to close your eyes."

He did, and she did -- not in Interlac, but he didn't feel any particular need to understand the words. They did their part, kept them in time, moving to the same rhythm. One song gave way to another, and a third, till the native life underfoot was flattened into the rust-stained earth where they danced; he found himself not tiring of it, muscles not complaining, boredom not an issue. Motion for the sake of motion, to no rhythm but their own. The ground solid under them, little iron-shelled creatures creeping through the low stalks and out from under the leaves to sun...

It came on so gradually that he didn't, at first, notice himself noticing. When he did, he opened his eyes. Nothing large enough to see moved nearby, so that wasn't evidence. But the sky --

He tipped his head back and opened his eyes, and arching over them were shimmering strands of intense color, north-south bands more blue more real than he'd seen in years. The cradling hands of his planet's field, telling him silently that he was welcome, he was home.

When he missed a step, she caught him, whirling him around in her arms till he could find his balance. "I read a lot of physics textbooks once," she said. "If you spin an uncharged object fast enough, it magnetizes along the axis. I ... thought maybe it wouldn't hurt to try."

He swallowed. "So I'm an object, am I?" Only the first couple of words shook.

She grinned again. "Well, I guess technically we are."

"But we're two separate people," he said. "What happens if we let go?"

The gold of her eyes caught the sky and shone straight through the reflected blue; and she said, perfectly unhurried, "I can hold your hand."