Two Parvati/Padma ficlets, PG-13
I'm not entirely sure if these fit, but here we are, anyhow. Written a couple of months ago as companion pieces to each other.
Saraswati
For Padma dance is like a formula, choreographed, the beat skipping twirling like x’s-y’s-polynomials out of grasp when she doesn’t know the answer. Garbhic hop, shrug twist wrists palm up now hips around and stamp! Perfectly in time to the music, fingers just right there and belly undulating just so here, leg extended back arched chin up just like that. And yet. Not.
“You don’t love it, my rani,” Parvati tells her matter-of-factly. “You’ve got to love it to be good.” Which is right, she doesn’t, and isn’t. It is only one more thing to be good at, be better-than at - but somehow she never minds it that Parvati is. She’s too busy watching.
When Parvati dances, as her mother says, the gods are smiling. When Parvati dances Padma forgets the formula, sees only, like Parvati says, love. Red-and-gold sari like Aphrodite’s girdle as she twirls, touches the floor and arches up, up, (into a twin mouth) supplication to the heavens, red-tipped fingers whirling up, down, around (across milk chocolate curves) through air, shoulders shrugging in timpanic fervor and feet flashing on the well-bhangra-ed floor. Her hips roll (against probing fingers) liquid, torso following effortlessly, breasts twisted forward (into another body). Padma is always enthralled (aroused) flushed (hot) deliciously uncomfortable as she watches Parvati’s braid fly out in joyful orbit round her as she whirls, bangles clacking rings flashing, dupatta writhing snapping floating to the ground abandoned (like stripped clothing in freefall).
And then she stops, abrupt as the monsoon, looks out at Padma through lowered lashes, eyes smoky. And Padma rises as if on cue, takes two strides to bring hands to a loosening sari, places her lips against the curve of a sweat-glossed neck.
“Well,” says Parvati, “if you can’t love the dance - “
“Love the dancer,” finishes Padma, and does.
Jeevansaathi
Padma is the more calculating of the two of them - more precise, more rigid, more perfectionist, more Indian. Stencilled. Of course, Parvati figures this must be pretty obvious to anyone who cares to look more than once at the two of them together - Padma stands straighter, wears the sterner dupattas, purses her lips, bites her tongue. And Parvati doesn’t.
It is only once that the rule doesn’t apply (because every rule needs an exception to prove it), and that is in the scarlet swirls and vermilion flowers, vines, whorls squeezed painstakingly onto bronze skin, the Temporary Tattoos of a desi. Parvati’s no good at henna, opts for the stencils and kits and lack of imagination, somehow can’t make the patterns look as good as … well, when Padma does it. To Parvati it seems that Padma lets loose in the Om symbols and the crimson vine-athon, in the eucalyptus oil beforehand and the lemon after, the thrill of not being able to go back and erase, the coppery freedom of skin and not textbooks. A little bit of everything the world (she) claims she's not.
Padma is almost impish when she gets the tube in hand, daring, coy. She lets the henna bhangra its way across the swells of Parvati’s breasts, fanning flower petals out around aureole centers, planting gardens of vermilion, writing naughty things in Hindi she would never say aloud. It doesn't help that the henna tickles as it goes on, tingles cool and sensual on its wayward paths across the rich landscape of Parvati's skin, stirring fire in her belly and prodding her impatience. Padma is in control in her art, dominant, powerful, the adventurous one, leaning down to flick her tongue in between tangles and swirls of henna, making Parvati’s stomach jump, inside the center of the flower, making her moan. Parvati would call it seduction in a tube, if it didn't sound like an advertisement for KY.
“Done,” murmurs Padma at last, capping her tube and sitting astride Parvati with an appraising glance. And a moment later, as she swings off of Parvati, obligingly, “Yes, you can look. And you'd better appreciate it, for all the work that took.” She looks smug.
Parvati shoots up immediately, examining herself eagerly, as usual, and … puzzledly. Hindi, yeah, but. “I don’t get it, Padi. 'You are my' what? Jee ... ”
“Vansaathi," prompts Padma.
"Van who?"
"Saathi. Jee-van-saathi." Padma throws up her hands. "Aaray baapray! You’re hopeless, rani,” she mutters, and goes off to bed. "Ask Bapuji what it means."
---
“Aah, bacchoodi!” exclaims her father happily as she asks. “How lovely, beta! You are looking for one, is it?” For one what? Sometimes Parvati thinks the whole family is just one big conspiracy.
Then he tells her, and her eyes widen, and she doesn't wait for another clacking-T-rolling-R exclamation before she's gone.
---
“You do understand it, don’t you?” asks Padma later, back to her perfectionist self, though draped over Parvati in a tangle of sweaty limbs and copper Hindi. Just like her to go all intellectual post-coitus, thinks Parvati, but she’s too sated to mind. “Jeevansaathi. Jeevan, life, saathi, companion.” The smug look again. "I thought it was rather ingenious, really," continues Padma lazily, fingertips still tracing the words over Parvati’s skin. “Too bad the bacchoodi’s Hindi was too poor to have it work properly.”
Dumb Ravenclaw. Not just romantic, intellectually romantic.
Ah, well, not everyone's a know-it-all. “Me tumse pyaar karti hu,” replies Parvati, and kisses her.
Saraswati
For Padma dance is like a formula, choreographed, the beat skipping twirling like x’s-y’s-polynomials out of grasp when she doesn’t know the answer. Garbhic hop, shrug twist wrists palm up now hips around and stamp! Perfectly in time to the music, fingers just right there and belly undulating just so here, leg extended back arched chin up just like that. And yet. Not.
“You don’t love it, my rani,” Parvati tells her matter-of-factly. “You’ve got to love it to be good.” Which is right, she doesn’t, and isn’t. It is only one more thing to be good at, be better-than at - but somehow she never minds it that Parvati is. She’s too busy watching.
When Parvati dances, as her mother says, the gods are smiling. When Parvati dances Padma forgets the formula, sees only, like Parvati says, love. Red-and-gold sari like Aphrodite’s girdle as she twirls, touches the floor and arches up, up, (into a twin mouth) supplication to the heavens, red-tipped fingers whirling up, down, around (across milk chocolate curves) through air, shoulders shrugging in timpanic fervor and feet flashing on the well-bhangra-ed floor. Her hips roll (against probing fingers) liquid, torso following effortlessly, breasts twisted forward (into another body). Padma is always enthralled (aroused) flushed (hot) deliciously uncomfortable as she watches Parvati’s braid fly out in joyful orbit round her as she whirls, bangles clacking rings flashing, dupatta writhing snapping floating to the ground abandoned (like stripped clothing in freefall).
And then she stops, abrupt as the monsoon, looks out at Padma through lowered lashes, eyes smoky. And Padma rises as if on cue, takes two strides to bring hands to a loosening sari, places her lips against the curve of a sweat-glossed neck.
“Well,” says Parvati, “if you can’t love the dance - “
“Love the dancer,” finishes Padma, and does.
Jeevansaathi
Padma is the more calculating of the two of them - more precise, more rigid, more perfectionist, more Indian. Stencilled. Of course, Parvati figures this must be pretty obvious to anyone who cares to look more than once at the two of them together - Padma stands straighter, wears the sterner dupattas, purses her lips, bites her tongue. And Parvati doesn’t.
It is only once that the rule doesn’t apply (because every rule needs an exception to prove it), and that is in the scarlet swirls and vermilion flowers, vines, whorls squeezed painstakingly onto bronze skin, the Temporary Tattoos of a desi. Parvati’s no good at henna, opts for the stencils and kits and lack of imagination, somehow can’t make the patterns look as good as … well, when Padma does it. To Parvati it seems that Padma lets loose in the Om symbols and the crimson vine-athon, in the eucalyptus oil beforehand and the lemon after, the thrill of not being able to go back and erase, the coppery freedom of skin and not textbooks. A little bit of everything the world (she) claims she's not.
Padma is almost impish when she gets the tube in hand, daring, coy. She lets the henna bhangra its way across the swells of Parvati’s breasts, fanning flower petals out around aureole centers, planting gardens of vermilion, writing naughty things in Hindi she would never say aloud. It doesn't help that the henna tickles as it goes on, tingles cool and sensual on its wayward paths across the rich landscape of Parvati's skin, stirring fire in her belly and prodding her impatience. Padma is in control in her art, dominant, powerful, the adventurous one, leaning down to flick her tongue in between tangles and swirls of henna, making Parvati’s stomach jump, inside the center of the flower, making her moan. Parvati would call it seduction in a tube, if it didn't sound like an advertisement for KY.
“Done,” murmurs Padma at last, capping her tube and sitting astride Parvati with an appraising glance. And a moment later, as she swings off of Parvati, obligingly, “Yes, you can look. And you'd better appreciate it, for all the work that took.” She looks smug.
Parvati shoots up immediately, examining herself eagerly, as usual, and … puzzledly. Hindi, yeah, but. “I don’t get it, Padi. 'You are my' what? Jee ... ”
“Vansaathi," prompts Padma.
"Van who?"
"Saathi. Jee-van-saathi." Padma throws up her hands. "Aaray baapray! You’re hopeless, rani,” she mutters, and goes off to bed. "Ask Bapuji what it means."
---
“Aah, bacchoodi!” exclaims her father happily as she asks. “How lovely, beta! You are looking for one, is it?” For one what? Sometimes Parvati thinks the whole family is just one big conspiracy.
Then he tells her, and her eyes widen, and she doesn't wait for another clacking-T-rolling-R exclamation before she's gone.
---
“You do understand it, don’t you?” asks Padma later, back to her perfectionist self, though draped over Parvati in a tangle of sweaty limbs and copper Hindi. Just like her to go all intellectual post-coitus, thinks Parvati, but she’s too sated to mind. “Jeevansaathi. Jeevan, life, saathi, companion.” The smug look again. "I thought it was rather ingenious, really," continues Padma lazily, fingertips still tracing the words over Parvati’s skin. “Too bad the bacchoodi’s Hindi was too poor to have it work properly.”
Dumb Ravenclaw. Not just romantic, intellectually romantic.
Ah, well, not everyone's a know-it-all. “Me tumse pyaar karti hu,” replies Parvati, and kisses her.