Emma steps out of the back door of the archives into the parking lot with her head turned, saying goodbye. She has a pile of books on one arm and her purse hanging from the other.
Both burdens are lifted out of her grip at once, from either side. She glances up, surprised. These are the only two people in the world who could get that close to her without warning.
Her two lovers start walking forward on either side of her at an even stroll that’s more terrifying than if they said anything. Dance is turning his head round like an owl as they go around the brick corner of the library.
“Talk,” Drin says calmly. “Anything.”
“Girly chatter?” Emma says. “Really trivial? Shopping. I got a ride with the girls over to the mall this morning.”
Dance smiles. “You bought a new perfume?”
“Yes, it seems to wear nicely, though it loses the upper notes of the florals and gets muskier over the hours,” Emma says.
“I like it,” Dance says.
“Oh good, I’m never sure about these things,” Emma says, feeling her gaze flick around the parking lot. She blinks away a vision of five gnarled, majestic, hollow-throated old oak matriarchs who ought to be standing there still, if the space had not been paved eighty years earlier–the date is perfectly precise in her mind. She dismisses it in irritation. She’s always having to blink away from distractions like that. It makes her slow in emergencies.
She doesn’t like to look at Drin when that sort of thing is happening to her. There’s too many questions and blank spots and conflicting errors. School dates and military service dates and multiple college entry dates and a stint in the Merchant Marine, all at the same time, with unavoidable proof of identity in all cases. It’s like finding out that your car or your front door is just a mirage.
The problem with looking at Dance, instead, is that his files add up as neatly and perfectly as a row of calculator sums. There is nothing out of place, nothing overlooked, nothing as muddy or doubtful as a real person. His files are too pretty. She finds no smudgy bits where a teacher forgot to record a grade.
But looking at him in real life is not soothing, either. In a real life emergency, he doesn’t move like anything Emma has ever seen before. It’s hard to look at Dance when he’s like that.
“It might be a little strong, I was trying about six different things out,” Emma says.
“I’ll just lick it off you,” Dance said, and smiles again.
Emma has ordinary days where she looks at Dance and thinks, Whatever that is, I’ve been doing my bloody best to fuck it into perfectly blissful peace. And it’s been doing its level best to make me happy. To please me. To make dinner for me. She blinks that away too. Nothing new to the human race, women have been doing that since Cain’s wife first wondered what in hell she was thinking when she let that man do her up against a bloody tree.
Drin takes something out of a pocket, flicks it under the center of Emma’s car, nods once, and then Dance is unlocking the doors with the keys from her purse so smoothly that she’s sliding in the driver’s seat before she realizes it’s happening. She blinks again, latching the seat belt. “We need some groceries,” she says, and gets the car in gear.
“That’s good,” Drin says, nodding in the front passenger seat. “How about the store down the other way, I’ve been meaning to get some of the good coffee beans.”
Dance swivels around in the back seat from side to side, peering out a partially opened window, so exactly like a dog with his nose in the wind that Emma stifles an uneasy laugh. “Right,” she says, trying not to sound hasty, grim.
Drin reaches out and rests his hand on her leg gently. It’s incredibly reassuring, and a flood of humiliating relief runs hot enough through her arms to make her tremble. “We’re good,” he says, but he’s watching things ahead and to the sides, eyes moving. He lifts his hand and rests it on her shoulder lightly for a moment. “You all right?”
She draws in a deep breath. “Work was fine. Busy, a few too many people calling in absent, nothing new…”
“Can I smell the new stuff?” Dance says. Glass clinks in the back seat as he rummages around.
“Oh,” Dance says, with a gasp. “Oh man.”
Drin twists free of his seat belt, reaches back an incredibly long arm, and swats the bottle out of Dance’s hand through the open back window. Expensive perfume splashes along the road and the sidewalk behind them. “Stop the car,” Drin says, quiet and clear, still twisted around. “Em, out. Go.”
She’s out the door and running mindlessly before the car comes to a complete stop. She can hear footfalls behind her, both men running likewise, catching up to her, no matter how desperately hard she’s pushing herself. She knows how it looks to staring people in the cars passing. It looks like she’s running away from two men who are chasing her. There will be calls. But she doesn’t stop.
She feels Drin’s hand on her arm eventually, and she slows down, staggers onward ten steps, then five more steps, and then she turns and leans both her arms around Drin.
“Fastest quarter-mile I’ve ever done,” Drin gasps.
Dance’s arms come round both of them. “Okay?” he says, squeezing hard before letting go to pace around.
Emma lifts her head blearily. “Effing hell, you’re not even breathing hard.” She feels the tension in Drin’s body when he looks past her at Dance. Dance is circling round them, making long loops and returning to them, head up, smelling the hot breeze.
“What is he–” Emma says.
“Shhh,” Drin murmured, down in his throat, watching him.
“Nothing,” Dance says to Drin absently during one pass, half-closing his eyes. Drin is stiff as a board, though.
Bloody freezing hellfire, the problem wasn’t left back in the car. We brought the bloody bomb out here with us.
Standing still while he comes closer is harder than it ought to be.
Dance puts up a hand toward Emma. Drin nods, stiffly, once, and Dance runs his fingers along the back of her hand softly, like an apology. Then he picks up her wrist, bends his head as if he’s going to sniff it, and begins to open his mouth as if he might kiss it.
Drin’s hand is there, gripping Dance’s chin. “Don’t,” he says.
Dance rolls his eyes upward, puzzled, and stares at him. Something flickers at the corners of his eyes when he blinks.
Drin shifts his weight, loosens his hand until he’s just cupping Dance’s face in his palm. Dance gives a surprised little noise when Drin kisses him, wrapping both arms around the shorter man to hug him tighter into the kiss. When he finally draws back, he breathes down into Dance’s hair, and touches him lightly on the face, strokes his back. “Okay?”
Dance blinks. The flicker is still there in the eyes. “Nice,” he says. His body clearly agrees.
Drin draws in a deep breath, sighs it out, and looks at Emma. “I’m sorry.”
Emma is pretty sure she’s not going to get much explanation. But it’s worth a try. “It wasn’t perfume?”
“It wasn’t only perfume, anyway,” Drin tells her, sounding tired. He leans into Dance, closing his eyes.
“We’ll be lucky if there’s a bloody chassis left to tow.” Emma says, looking around.
Dance turns his head into Drin’s shoulder, chuckling.
Drin says, smiling, “Why don’t you scrub your hands in that cut grass right there, where it’s wet? The chlorophyll in it should help neutralize some of it at least.”
“Bloody damn effing hell,” Emma says. She stands up again, and starts walking. “I liked that purse. And I suppose I have to take four or five showers and keep my bloody hands off Dance for a couple days or something silly. And here I was looking forward to a nice weekend of laying around getting my effing back fixed up nicely, I mean, between bouts of getting fed grapes and little iced nothings and slurping up both of you bad boys until you give up in defeat. I suppose this is your idea of a fine excuse to loll around playing computer games all day instead. And– Dance, what happened to your good jacket?”
There is a flash, a whump, behind them, and car alarms begin to sound up and down the street. Emma’s shoulders hunch with the sound of it, and she keeps walking.
===
From the Challenge: Cornered