(no subject)
Fandom: Blood+
Spoilers: None.
Characters: Karl and Diva
Word Count: 910
Author's Note: For my father, who years ago thought it would be a fantastic idea to tell his little daughter that vampires came out on foggy nights.
The storm has passed, leaving in its wake a world rinsed rinsed clean.
They've been gone too long when she takes his hands, pulls him up.
"Dance with me."
Plumes of fog form a curtain over the damp loam, countless silver coins melted down and folded over, over, forming a shroud fit to cover the earth. The clouds are lying over the moon so thickly that even he, at home in the deepest hours of the night, cannot begin to guess the time, only that Amshel has warned him and they have been gone too long, and he rises with her.
"Here?"
"Right here. Dance with me."
She wraps her arms around his neck with a smile, somewhere between the bright, refined sugar smile of a child and the velvet smirk of a woman who knows just how close, too close, she is pressing her body to his. She smiles because she knows that he will give her exactly what she asks without even the slightest hesitation, that he would stay out all night, three days, a year; that if she expressed a desire to blind him, he would open his eyes wide.
He knows it, too, has no desire to fight it, and she's taking his hand, laying it on her waist. "You lead."
She is dressed in a plain cotton gown, so beautiful it tears through his chest and makes him want to die all over again. He relishes in the feel of her delicate fingers entwining with his, pictures them shattering bones and effortlessly tearing limbs from screaming torsos. No one else could possibly wreak such perfectionate carnage, elevating mere brutality to a level of artistic masterpiece.
"As you like, my Diva."
As he moves, so does she, stepping easily into the roll and turn of a waltz. He feels the rush of night air in his lungs, each breath a homage to the one who took a dying student into her arms and, with a single kiss, forced life itself down through his throat. Tuberculosis is a disease which lingers, consuming a body at its own leisurely pace...Diva had done so in the space of an hour. For this, she has earned him.
Step to the left. Step to the right.
She's playing with the seam over his right shoulder and giggling as the soles of her bare feet slide across the damp grass, but mirroring him with a precision fit to grace the grandest dance halls ever designed, and leave them crumbling to the ground in her departure. Even as she allows him the illusion of leading, he knows that he exists only as a smooth plane for her to shine off of, a means to accentuate her own impossible brightness.
Feet together and step to the left once more, through the playful attempts of the fog to ensnare their ankles.
The cricket song is no string quartet, the distant thrum of frogs no three part harmony, but it has never been more than enough. When he whisks her out, she spins and bends as though she might become mist itself, drifting away from him into the night, and his throat clenches with joy each time she returns to his arms. Her heartbeat races up the arm into the palm, flickers across his dormant pulse point, granting the momentary illusion that his own heart was never silenced.
Step to the left, step to the right. She nips his chin and tells him he dances stiffly.
"Loosen your back," comes the command, small puffs against the space between his ear and neck that threaten to melt him from the inside out. No sooner has he obeyed than she is pushing, tugging, urging him on into the quick, lilting rhythm of a Viennese waltz.
To the left, the right! Around and out, fast enough to keep the sun at bay.
He remembers where they are, crushes the name against his palm, and throws the dust to spread and settle and die. Paris, Hanoi, Moscow, it doesn't matter. New York City, London. Raze them to the ground and let nature take the remains; this hillside is just enough, their own dark, nameless, perfect world. Yes, and and he will tear apart anyone so foolish as to say otherwise, dip into what spills forth with a brush made of fog, and paint scores of music, beautiful music for them to dance to.
Together, together! To the left, to the right!
Faster now, always turning, changing. A Redowa, a tango, then leave the formality of names behind and make a rhythm all their own. Moving. Only moving. She has never followed the rules and so he follows her, loving her enough for the both of them, loving her enough to rend himself apart.
And when it stops. Oh, when it finally slows to a stop.
Her eyes, stunningly cobalt and savage as a plague, flit across the hillside, the stars, the blinding moon, before they ever reach his - and when at last they do, he is reminded how it is he still hears music playing.
She giggles. "That was fun. You're getting better at this."
Delicate, he kisses the back of her hand like it's the only beautiful thing he'll ever do.
"It was my greatest pleasure."
They have been gone too long. They have been far too close, speaking things only the fog will know.
The song dies between them