[P] dirty valentine

[Marisol]

Just standing here is exhausting - pretending not to care about the brush of Theo’s tail against her leg, the comfortable weight as they lean against each other, or the faint heat of her skin - it takes the breath out of her, unwarranted for someone who’s so in shape, who makes living off of danger. Of all places to be in the dead of night, this might be one of the safest. And yet her heart is beating with all the force and bite of something feral, beating so loud she almost can’t hear anything over the rush of blood in her ear.

She watches the rest of the cadets through frosted-glass eyes, silver without shine. Some part of her knows, very, very well, that there are a million and a half ways that this could go wrong and only one where it turns out well enough to continue, but an even bigger part of her is so lost to logic it doesn’t matter anyway.

When Theo speaks, that part takes over entirely.

She doesn’t respond. The burn in her throat is too thick to speak over, the hammering of her pulse too loud to work around. Instead she meets the cadet’s eyes in the near dark of the bar, slate-gray against violet, gaze furious under those dark lashes, and grins. On the commander it is a thing of ferocity. She wears it as easily as she wears the white stripes on her feathers, though she knows it’ll be much harder to take off.

Rather than speak, Marisol presses her shoulder harder against Theo’s and steps toward the door, steering them gently away from the crowd. They’re intertwined so closely she can see her own breath stirring the fine hairs of Theodosia’s coat, swears that the space between them is only imagined at this point. The other Halcyons are so involved in their game they hardly notice the Commander pushing her cadet toward the door, but still, as Mari crosses the line to take them outside the door, she feels something like anxiety in the pit of her stomach.

Well - too late for any of that.

They step outside.

@Theodosia