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"You're fighting it."
Of all the people to show up here, in her dressing room, Aminata hadn't expected the shadow herself— though maybe she ought to have. The world, after all, has gone quite hazy at the edges, dark splashes where there should be light, and it's not the sort of thing she enjoys. Aminata’s vision has doubled, halo-esque; she knows better than to believe it's heaven-sent. After all, the mist had burned when it made contact with her eyes, and even after she'd so thoroughly rinsed them clean, the sensation remained.
The stain is not upon her skin, but her soul, and it's ravenous.
Aminata is slow to lift her chin; let the woman wait. Julia has already demanded so much, and Aminata is not keen to gift her more.
"Bold, to come in after what you did," Aminata says.
Julia smiles. Her lips are ruby red, bright against the pale sheen of her cheeks. Aminata wishes it wasn't fetching. "What did I do?"
"Did you come here just to play games? Offer unwanted riddles?" Aminata shifts. Sitting on the bench, every nerve aches. She suspects this is something that comes along with the mist, or at least the consequence of refusing it. Down to her core she can feel the hum as it has wrapped itself around her skeleton, waiting for the ability to dig in. Claws and teeth, and all of it paused. Aminata will not give the darkness the pleasure of her soul, no matter how sweet the whispered promises are.
She just hadn't expected the process to throb in time with her heart, angry. She probably should have asked the others who have experienced this what was expected, but it's far too late now.
"Mm." Julia kneels on the bench like a cat preparing to pounce, knees tucked up beneath her weight. Here, without the wide-brimmed hat or the arena lights, she's smaller, somehow, but no less a threat. No, Aminata didn't hold enough regard for Julia, and now she's paying the price. "It wouldn't be unwanted if you'd stop fighting."
"Do you think this is going to work?" Aminata asks.
"Can you feel it?" Julia asks, not an answer at all. She tilts her head to the side, that single blackened eye roving across Aminata's face. "Can you feel it inside you? Growing? Feasting?"
"I don't want it," Aminata growls.
Julia doesn't blink, though she does reach out to touch the strand of Aminata's hair that has slipped over her shoulder. "But it wants you."
"Stop."
Julia smiles again, sharper this time. "I'm not doing anything."
Perhaps not, but the room around them is. Aminata wonders if it's all reacting to Julia's presence, or if the mist lingering beneath Aminata's skin has triggered a hallucination. Surely the locker room really isn't spinning like this, isn't flickering on and off like an old television screen. Aminata is both everywhere and nowhere, and none of the edges line up. Even when she fills her chest with oxygen, reality fails to right itself. It's dizzying to be at the mercy of something she has so little control over.
"Stop," she tries again, and hates how much weaker it sounds the second time. It's a mistake to offer vulnerability here— that's what the mist shrouding her heart wishes her to do.
Julia does not stop, nor did Aminata actually expect her to. Julia tugs that strand of hair down and around, allowing the lock to coil loosely around her finger. "What does it feel like? It's been so long since I got to experience the takeover. I wish I'd spent more time on committing everything to memory."
Aminata shakes her head and tries to close her eyes. They refuse to be commanded. This, too, it seems, will react to Julia's proximity. Aminata has a noose wrapped around her heart, and Julia's holding the other side of the line. "There's something wrong with you," she whispers. "Something dark."
"Yes," comes the answer in kind, and those red, red lips shifting ever so slightly closer. They are very near now, on the bench; Aminata can't quite wrap her thoughts around a direction to stand and flee. "It's in you, too. It's in all of us, you simply have to accept it."
"I don't want to accept it."
Another little hum, and this time, they are so close Aminata can feel the faint buzz of it. "I don't know why. It's all so lovely. Freeing." Julia's finger slides from Aminata's hair to her neck, the exposed skin there. Her touch is warm where Aminata had expected it to be ice. "To no longer be beholden to the expectations of others, their demands. To be yourself."
"This is myself," Aminata tries, barely an exhale. The mist in her lungs is blossoming like brambles bursting through the soil, unable to be contained. She has stumbled upon a plot of quicksand and can't find the way out.
"It doesn't have to be."
Aminata inhales, a wave of Julia's perfume: something light and floral, with a darker note at the end. Just like the mist, the scent is intoxicating. "This is the easy way out."
"No, this is an opportunity," Julia murmurs. Her mouth finds Aminata's cheek, a caress up, and Aminata wonders if Julia is leaving a streak of that lipstick behind. She shouldn't be hoping to find the cherry stain there later, but her heart taps out a traitorous little rhythm of desire.
In truth, Aminata does want this. She's curious to the ability to no longer care, to lose the inhibitions of what people expect, what society thinks she ought to be, and she knows, oh, she knows, that the path she's toeing delicately leads to certain ruin. Yet there's a delirious element of giving into something else. The ability to simply hand the decision-making over to another, something hungry and snarling, offers relief.
Julia must sense the war in Aminata's heart. Maybe the mist coating the organ speaks to Julia, peals of laughter as Aminata thinks of giving in. Whatever the case may be, Aminata's hesitation provides an opening, and Julia doesn't hesitate to take it. She leans in, presses her lips to Aminata's— her mouth is sweet, impossibly so. Aminata can't and won't fight when Julia coaxes her lips apart, a coy request to delve within and claim. She maps out the hollow space between Aminata's cheeks with a single-minded focus as though this and every last inch of Aminata can be hers.
The shadows curled around Aminata's lungs pulse in time with her heart, skipping. Julia's tongue sweeps behind the back of Aminata's teeth before finding her own as though wishing to play a game.
Perhaps that is all any of this is to her: children's games on the playground after all the stars have winked out.
"What if I wanted to have you?" Julia whispers against Aminata's cheek, and try as she might, Aminata can do nothing but tip her head sideways to offer better access. Julia's hand, the one that had settled on Aminata's neck, slides down further in an unhurried exploration. Her nails drag lightly over Aminata's collarbone, her sternum. They dip further into the space between her breasts and find the edge of her bodice. "What if I wished to taste you just as the mist has done?"
"Julia," Aminata groans. She doesn't doubt that Julia possesses the same canines, the same bite that the shadows do.
The mist within her chest has begun to warm. Aminata has a fire caged inside her ribs, and it's being stoked in time with Julia’s mouth on her neck. Julia's hand does not stop at Aminata's top, but continues on: past her navel, to the waistband of her tights. These two, they are working in tandem; as Aminata inhales, an unshaky and ultimately unsuccessful bid for renewed control, Julia’s palm slips beneath the elastic.
It feels good when Julia’s fingers find her, as though Aminata was waiting for this the whole time. The mist has risen to coat the roof of her mouth, cloying and saccharine. Julia’s index finger is coquettish when it curves up and back, into the core of her, the aching heat, and Aminata wants to grind down on Julia's hand. She's desperate for the friction afforded her when Julia's digits curl slightly against her clit. The pressure is overwhelming. Her thoughts blank.
"You want this," Julia says, all air, and the heat against the shell of Aminata's ear matches the heat of Julia's finger rubbing circles against her.
"I don't," Aminata tries, though she suspects it means nothing; after all, she's the one moving against Julia's palm, letting herself slick Julia's skin. She's the one whose hands have curved around the edge of the bench in the only stability she's got left as she pushes up, thighs trembling, into Julia's caresses.
"Come for me," Julia murmurs against her ear, as her fingers strike up a methodical, languid rotation, the most delicious combination of confident and teasing. There's no question here, only the answer pulled free from Aminata's chest in a warbling moan. She hears the undercurrent, the unspoken command: come to me.
She will. Her hips move of their own accord, lifting off the bench. She's eager when she pushes up against Julia's palm. Aminata feels nothing, and everything, sparks left in the wake of each stroke as the mist bubbles up the back of her throat. She could swallow it down, give it life, plant it deep.
The pressure builds beneath Animata's skin, Julia's lips and fingers both relentless in their quest to claim, and as Aminata tips over the edge, Julia's fingers shift to delve within, to stake her flag as Aminata's muscles clench around her knuckles. Aminata's eyes snap open. She comes with a cry and a single thought at the forefront of her mind.
No.
The mist shrieks in the wake of the euphoria. Aminata has refused the moment of joining, even with Julia’s fingers plunged inside her; she has not given in. She won't give in.
Before the aftershocks have dissipated, Julia sits back, expression furious. Those red, red lips twist down in rage. "Why?" Julia demands.
"I won't," Aminata gasps. Her thighs are shaking against the bench; she can almost taste the orgasm— damning and beautiful and horrible, all at the same time. Her bones threaten to rattle clean. "I won't become what you want me to be."
The darkness at the sides of her vision has cleared. Julia snatches her hand out from Aminata's clothes, as though burned. "How dare you."
"No," Aminata says, and for the first time, it's a threat. She has found herself again, amidst the shadows. "How dare you."
Strength floods her veins. And as Julia stands, almost too quick and off-balance, Aminata is fiercely glad for it. She glares at Julia, and she knows that she's won. The mist will not find a feast in her soul.
"Get out," Aminata growls.
Julia retreats, and the lights return to what they should be: warm and bright.
The vice around Aminata's heart fades to nothing, and she is herself again.