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thejusticelounge2013-07-21 10:11 am
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2013-07-21 10:11 am
Entry tags:
it takes toe to tango
Steph wraps her arms around Bai's waist from behind. "Hi, honey. What are you up to tonight?" she asks, kissing her ear playfully.
Bai buzzes in — surprise or excitement, maybe both — and wriggles with joy in Steph’s arms. “Giving myself a pedicure," she says, holding up a little fancy box of polishes and equipment. “I can’t go get it done because you know Speed Force kicks in and it’s hardforpeople to use their tools on me and hard for me tokeep still! So I do it myself. You want one?"
Smiles to herself and sits down beside her on the couch to take her shoes off. “Sure, thanks! These puppies are do for a little TLC,” she says, wiggling her toes. “What color are you doing for yours?”
"Blue and silver," Bai replies immediately, also wiggling her toes. “Blue with silver tips. But I got a brand new nailpolish that I should try on you, Stephie!" She plucks a bottle from the little crowd within her pedicure box and shakes it in Steph’s direction. “Look, it’s an outer space nailpolish!! Then when we go to the clubs your toenails will light up and nobody will step on them!"
The next thing Steph knows, both of the girls are sitting with their feet sharing a big round tub of warm sudsy water. “Presoak," Bai says unnecessarily.
“See, this? This right here? This is why I trust you and only you to design a city. You think of everything!” she laughs, taking the bottle and turning it over in her hands, watching the colors swirl. Steph barely flinched at the whoosh of feeling from Bai’s super speed, but hummed a note of appreciation at the warm water up to their ankles.
She scooted closer so she and Bai were hip to hip, resting her arm around her girlfriend’s waist cozily. ”You’re the cuddliest nail artist ever. Want me to whip up some oatmeal face masks for us? Not that you need it,” she cooed, pecking the girl’s cheek.
"Oooooh yeah! Once I paint our toenails we can waddle around all awkward like in the kitchen and you can make oatmeal masks. Although I might be tempted to eat your face!" Bai turned and made nomming noises against Steph’s cheek, finishing with a kiss and a giggle.
"My feet seem ready to go now," the speedster said in a considering tone, then it was time for another burst of speed and Steph found her feet propped up on a towel-covered stool. Bai was sitting on the floor, her legs splayed on either side of the stool, one foot propped up on the sofa next to each of Steph’s thighs. “Finished the first colour for mine," Bai explained cheerily, wiggling her blue toes. “They gotta dry before the silver. And I want to do yours in your-time and not speed-time!"
She started grooming Steph’s nails with vigour. “This is kind of a cruddy day for lots of people," Bai said after a moment or two. “I’m glad we’re together for it."
Steph giggled into the kiss, letting Bai reposition her as she liked. “Then you’re going to love when I add the brown sugar and honey, honey!” she said, bending at the waist to blow on Bai’s wet toe nails. “I love this blue on you. It really offsets your skin nicely,” she mused, squeezing the ankle and calf of both legs in a soothing manner as Bai painted.
“I am, too. Really.” And she meant that. She felt her chest go a little tight in a sudden wave of affection for this silly, beautiful, wonderful woman. “Daddies are supposed to be there for their kids and protect them. Today just kind of reinforces how some of us missed out on that kind of love,” she said a little sadly. Then thinking about it, she snort-laughed. “You hit the jackpot, honey. You’re dating a blonde with daddy issues!”
"I hit the jackpot anyhow." Bai stared at Steph, a fixed sort of unblinking cat stare, then shook herself out of it and curled down to kiss Steph’s leg. “You’re a blonde with daddy issues and a lot of other issues. But that never slows you down, Steph. If there’s anything I think is incredible it’s people who never let bad things slow them down."
Bai finished the second foot’s base polish and went back to the first foot, shaking the bottle of special space polish. “I sometimes think about using the Cosmic Treadmill and shooting myself into the future so I can see my parents again, but I’m not good enough with the treadmill yet. Even if I want to be. Wally’s better." Bai made a face. “I hate thinking there’s anything he’s better at than me when it comes to Speed Force."
Starting to apply the sparkly polish, she cocked her head at Steph. “Did you feel that with anybody else? Any Bats I mean? Like rivalry?"
“I know how you feel,” she said, wondering for maybe the dozenth time how she’d gotten so lucky with Bai. “You’re that way, too, you know. You’re one of the strongest people I know.” Steph leaned forward and stole a soft, lingering kiss from her to drive the point home and relax the slightly annoyed expression on the girl’s face.
She felt sympathy for her about her rivalry with the Flash and thought it over. “Yeah, I used to all the time. Tim was my boyfriend and all, but he was also my tutor, and sometimes it felt like I was constantly being compared to him. And Cass before we were friends. Honestly, I don’t think you’re a hero unless you’re paranoid about another hero out-heroing you, you know?”
A thought occurred to her and Steph felt guilty asking for two reasons: One, because today was a vortex of family angst already, and two, because she should have expressed interest in this a long time ago. “I feel bad asking this -and feel free not to talk about it if it sucks too much or it’s not my business- but, I mean … what’s the deal with you and your family? You got separated from them because they live in the future and that’s where you’re from?”
"Tim’s rilly rilly rilly good at everything, too." Bai tipped her head and examined the space nailpolish, cleaning up a few places with a remover-soaked orange stick before moving on to Steph’s other foot. “Kon and me used to gripe about it all the time, until we saw how corny his disguises were and how bad he was at dancing!" She got up and did a stilted little dance, mimicking Tim’s most uncomfortable expression, before laughing and resuming her place on the floor.
"My family, though…" Bai left off with the polish and just started massaging Steph’s foot, looking pensive. “There was a lot of skipping around that caused it, trying to escape Professor Zoom and the Cosmic Treadmill opening up a multiverse rift and all kinds of things like that." She rattled this off like it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; being a speedster meant you would experience events that were odd for non-speedsters, but not you. “I had hyperspeedism? So my body got older about six times faster than my brain, and Earthgov-of-the-future put me in a virtual reality box to try and keep me from getting you know mental health problems."
She paused there for a moment, tapping her fingers in a little syncopated rhythm on Steph’s ankles, before picking up the story as if she’d never stopped. “But it wasn’t working and I was getting worse so Grandma Iris stole me and brought me back in time so Wally could help me learn how to control my speed and my mind and body could age together. And I’ve been here since. Which is great because I met a lot of people who I love, but I miss my mom and dad and I’m not even really sure if they’re still alive unless people come back and tell me."
Steph laughed with Bai in her impression of Tim, liking that they could joke about that shared person from their history without it being awkward. As she listened, though, her smile faded gradually. She’d known the bare basic story via Tim from when he’d spoken of the Titans before, but hearing Bai talk about it like it was no big deal to be ripped from your home and family -and kind of dying at the same time, by the way- and then sent to a foreign time to fend for herself while she got better, no idea if her family was still alive? …
Taking care not to screw up Bai’s handiwork on her toes (which looked pretty darn great), she scooted forward off the couch to sit in front of Bai, Steph’s knees bent up and curled around her girlfriend while she gave her a firm hug. “I stand corrected. You’re really really strong,” she murmured, kissing her soft black hair. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that. That’s 31 flavors of unfairness.”
She was trying to make her smile, joking like that, but Steph didn’t want to cheapen the sentiment still. She was having the first stirrings of fierce protectiveness for Bai. “The way I look at it, how and why you’re here suck, but if it hadn’t been for all of that … I wouldn’t have met you. Color me selfish, but can I be both upset and a little glad that that all happened to you?” she asked, tugging on Bai’s earlobe playfully.
Steph’s changing positions to come down on the floor, wrap herself around Bai, make sweet little half-jokes about ice-cream — it all helped ease the prickly don’t-touch-me crackle of anxiety that Bai was prone to sometimes, the effect of the constant speed racing inside her. And when Steph kissed her hair and called her strong, Bai felt her eternal control on her speed … unsnarl, a bit. Not enough to make it dangerous, just enough so that instead of perpetual silver-blue tension through her long runner’s muscles, she felt a little bit of Steph’s gold sink in.
Reaching out, Bai put her hands flat against Steph’s back and curled her fingers in, the tips kneading into Steph’s muscles as she allowed herself to drop into her own subjective time. Suddenly the other girl was a slow tawny-sinuous lioness in her arms, all gold brown and warm and intense in the focus she was putting on Bai, the fierceness in her clear, forthright eyes. The beauty of that look was — it was so astonishing that Bai found she didn’t mind being in her own timeframe. The slowdown wasn’t maddening, it was glorious. It was a chance to fully appreciate Steph, the passion of her, the kindness, everything that had drawn Bai to her in the first place.
With a tiny mewl, she finally let the tendrils of time slip from her grasp and shifted back into non-speed space, leaning in to kiss Steph’s cheek, her smiling mouth, her rounded forehead. “I’m totes glad too," Bai said breathlessly. “I missed my family for a long time but time works different for me, and now it seems like forever ago since I knew them. It doesn’t hurt so much. And now I have you."
Steph felt a familiar tingling at her back from Bai’s hands (when had they gotten there?) and saw the girl’s face not a foot from her own blur for just hardly a second. In a blink, it felt as though she’d missed a very important moment, but she brushed it off. it was one of Bai’s most endearing qualities when she got worked up and in her own little time zone. She felt some color rise to her cheeks as Bai spoke, kissed her.
It honestly winded her -in the good way!- when her girlfriend went all mile-a-minute with her though processes. She smiled back at her, falling hopelessly for her. “Thank you for wanting me,” she said suddenly. It was impulsive and thoughtless, but it begged being said. “I love that I have you, too.” And Steph nudged her girlfriend’s chin up with her thumb, other hand resting on the exposed skin at her waist, and kissed her soundly, toe-curlingly.
She pulled back, digging her fingers into Bai’s unprotected ribs to tickle her and then scooted away and to her feet before she could retaliate. “I’m going to go whip us up some face masks! I swear, you’re going to smell like cinnamon and honey for a straight up week, but your skin’s never going to be softer. Not that yours isn’t already,” she added with a little wink, walking to the kitchen on her heels, toes still wet.
Bai stretched contentedly as Steph waltzed (okay more of a pigeon-toed wobble) off to the kitchen to concoct these face masks. “If we smell like cinnamon and honey for a week we’re gonna have people buzzing around us!" she laughed. “I bet Mar’i and Roy would like that smell, and I’ve seen the way Damian eats baklava, he could give *me* a challenge when it comes to how fast he inhales it, I swear! You might get little teethmarks on your leg."
It was amazing how comfy Steph made her feel. Speedster business meant a lot of zinging, jangled nerves and specificity when it came to how and when and why they wanted to be touched, but Steph seemed to instinctively know where the limits intersected with the desire for more.
"Best summer EVER," Bai said to herself, quite pleased.
Bai buzzes in — surprise or excitement, maybe both — and wriggles with joy in Steph’s arms. “Giving myself a pedicure," she says, holding up a little fancy box of polishes and equipment. “I can’t go get it done because you know Speed Force kicks in and it’s hardforpeople to use their tools on me and hard for me tokeep still! So I do it myself. You want one?"
Smiles to herself and sits down beside her on the couch to take her shoes off. “Sure, thanks! These puppies are do for a little TLC,” she says, wiggling her toes. “What color are you doing for yours?”
"Blue and silver," Bai replies immediately, also wiggling her toes. “Blue with silver tips. But I got a brand new nailpolish that I should try on you, Stephie!" She plucks a bottle from the little crowd within her pedicure box and shakes it in Steph’s direction. “Look, it’s an outer space nailpolish!! Then when we go to the clubs your toenails will light up and nobody will step on them!"
The next thing Steph knows, both of the girls are sitting with their feet sharing a big round tub of warm sudsy water. “Presoak," Bai says unnecessarily.
“See, this? This right here? This is why I trust you and only you to design a city. You think of everything!” she laughs, taking the bottle and turning it over in her hands, watching the colors swirl. Steph barely flinched at the whoosh of feeling from Bai’s super speed, but hummed a note of appreciation at the warm water up to their ankles.
She scooted closer so she and Bai were hip to hip, resting her arm around her girlfriend’s waist cozily. ”You’re the cuddliest nail artist ever. Want me to whip up some oatmeal face masks for us? Not that you need it,” she cooed, pecking the girl’s cheek.
"Oooooh yeah! Once I paint our toenails we can waddle around all awkward like in the kitchen and you can make oatmeal masks. Although I might be tempted to eat your face!" Bai turned and made nomming noises against Steph’s cheek, finishing with a kiss and a giggle.
"My feet seem ready to go now," the speedster said in a considering tone, then it was time for another burst of speed and Steph found her feet propped up on a towel-covered stool. Bai was sitting on the floor, her legs splayed on either side of the stool, one foot propped up on the sofa next to each of Steph’s thighs. “Finished the first colour for mine," Bai explained cheerily, wiggling her blue toes. “They gotta dry before the silver. And I want to do yours in your-time and not speed-time!"
She started grooming Steph’s nails with vigour. “This is kind of a cruddy day for lots of people," Bai said after a moment or two. “I’m glad we’re together for it."
Steph giggled into the kiss, letting Bai reposition her as she liked. “Then you’re going to love when I add the brown sugar and honey, honey!” she said, bending at the waist to blow on Bai’s wet toe nails. “I love this blue on you. It really offsets your skin nicely,” she mused, squeezing the ankle and calf of both legs in a soothing manner as Bai painted.
“I am, too. Really.” And she meant that. She felt her chest go a little tight in a sudden wave of affection for this silly, beautiful, wonderful woman. “Daddies are supposed to be there for their kids and protect them. Today just kind of reinforces how some of us missed out on that kind of love,” she said a little sadly. Then thinking about it, she snort-laughed. “You hit the jackpot, honey. You’re dating a blonde with daddy issues!”
"I hit the jackpot anyhow." Bai stared at Steph, a fixed sort of unblinking cat stare, then shook herself out of it and curled down to kiss Steph’s leg. “You’re a blonde with daddy issues and a lot of other issues. But that never slows you down, Steph. If there’s anything I think is incredible it’s people who never let bad things slow them down."
Bai finished the second foot’s base polish and went back to the first foot, shaking the bottle of special space polish. “I sometimes think about using the Cosmic Treadmill and shooting myself into the future so I can see my parents again, but I’m not good enough with the treadmill yet. Even if I want to be. Wally’s better." Bai made a face. “I hate thinking there’s anything he’s better at than me when it comes to Speed Force."
Starting to apply the sparkly polish, she cocked her head at Steph. “Did you feel that with anybody else? Any Bats I mean? Like rivalry?"
“I know how you feel,” she said, wondering for maybe the dozenth time how she’d gotten so lucky with Bai. “You’re that way, too, you know. You’re one of the strongest people I know.” Steph leaned forward and stole a soft, lingering kiss from her to drive the point home and relax the slightly annoyed expression on the girl’s face.
She felt sympathy for her about her rivalry with the Flash and thought it over. “Yeah, I used to all the time. Tim was my boyfriend and all, but he was also my tutor, and sometimes it felt like I was constantly being compared to him. And Cass before we were friends. Honestly, I don’t think you’re a hero unless you’re paranoid about another hero out-heroing you, you know?”
A thought occurred to her and Steph felt guilty asking for two reasons: One, because today was a vortex of family angst already, and two, because she should have expressed interest in this a long time ago. “I feel bad asking this -and feel free not to talk about it if it sucks too much or it’s not my business- but, I mean … what’s the deal with you and your family? You got separated from them because they live in the future and that’s where you’re from?”
"Tim’s rilly rilly rilly good at everything, too." Bai tipped her head and examined the space nailpolish, cleaning up a few places with a remover-soaked orange stick before moving on to Steph’s other foot. “Kon and me used to gripe about it all the time, until we saw how corny his disguises were and how bad he was at dancing!" She got up and did a stilted little dance, mimicking Tim’s most uncomfortable expression, before laughing and resuming her place on the floor.
"My family, though…" Bai left off with the polish and just started massaging Steph’s foot, looking pensive. “There was a lot of skipping around that caused it, trying to escape Professor Zoom and the Cosmic Treadmill opening up a multiverse rift and all kinds of things like that." She rattled this off like it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; being a speedster meant you would experience events that were odd for non-speedsters, but not you. “I had hyperspeedism? So my body got older about six times faster than my brain, and Earthgov-of-the-future put me in a virtual reality box to try and keep me from getting you know mental health problems."
She paused there for a moment, tapping her fingers in a little syncopated rhythm on Steph’s ankles, before picking up the story as if she’d never stopped. “But it wasn’t working and I was getting worse so Grandma Iris stole me and brought me back in time so Wally could help me learn how to control my speed and my mind and body could age together. And I’ve been here since. Which is great because I met a lot of people who I love, but I miss my mom and dad and I’m not even really sure if they’re still alive unless people come back and tell me."
Steph laughed with Bai in her impression of Tim, liking that they could joke about that shared person from their history without it being awkward. As she listened, though, her smile faded gradually. She’d known the bare basic story via Tim from when he’d spoken of the Titans before, but hearing Bai talk about it like it was no big deal to be ripped from your home and family -and kind of dying at the same time, by the way- and then sent to a foreign time to fend for herself while she got better, no idea if her family was still alive? …
Taking care not to screw up Bai’s handiwork on her toes (which looked pretty darn great), she scooted forward off the couch to sit in front of Bai, Steph’s knees bent up and curled around her girlfriend while she gave her a firm hug. “I stand corrected. You’re really really strong,” she murmured, kissing her soft black hair. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that. That’s 31 flavors of unfairness.”
She was trying to make her smile, joking like that, but Steph didn’t want to cheapen the sentiment still. She was having the first stirrings of fierce protectiveness for Bai. “The way I look at it, how and why you’re here suck, but if it hadn’t been for all of that … I wouldn’t have met you. Color me selfish, but can I be both upset and a little glad that that all happened to you?” she asked, tugging on Bai’s earlobe playfully.
Steph’s changing positions to come down on the floor, wrap herself around Bai, make sweet little half-jokes about ice-cream — it all helped ease the prickly don’t-touch-me crackle of anxiety that Bai was prone to sometimes, the effect of the constant speed racing inside her. And when Steph kissed her hair and called her strong, Bai felt her eternal control on her speed … unsnarl, a bit. Not enough to make it dangerous, just enough so that instead of perpetual silver-blue tension through her long runner’s muscles, she felt a little bit of Steph’s gold sink in.
Reaching out, Bai put her hands flat against Steph’s back and curled her fingers in, the tips kneading into Steph’s muscles as she allowed herself to drop into her own subjective time. Suddenly the other girl was a slow tawny-sinuous lioness in her arms, all gold brown and warm and intense in the focus she was putting on Bai, the fierceness in her clear, forthright eyes. The beauty of that look was — it was so astonishing that Bai found she didn’t mind being in her own timeframe. The slowdown wasn’t maddening, it was glorious. It was a chance to fully appreciate Steph, the passion of her, the kindness, everything that had drawn Bai to her in the first place.
With a tiny mewl, she finally let the tendrils of time slip from her grasp and shifted back into non-speed space, leaning in to kiss Steph’s cheek, her smiling mouth, her rounded forehead. “I’m totes glad too," Bai said breathlessly. “I missed my family for a long time but time works different for me, and now it seems like forever ago since I knew them. It doesn’t hurt so much. And now I have you."
Steph felt a familiar tingling at her back from Bai’s hands (when had they gotten there?) and saw the girl’s face not a foot from her own blur for just hardly a second. In a blink, it felt as though she’d missed a very important moment, but she brushed it off. it was one of Bai’s most endearing qualities when she got worked up and in her own little time zone. She felt some color rise to her cheeks as Bai spoke, kissed her.
It honestly winded her -in the good way!- when her girlfriend went all mile-a-minute with her though processes. She smiled back at her, falling hopelessly for her. “Thank you for wanting me,” she said suddenly. It was impulsive and thoughtless, but it begged being said. “I love that I have you, too.” And Steph nudged her girlfriend’s chin up with her thumb, other hand resting on the exposed skin at her waist, and kissed her soundly, toe-curlingly.
She pulled back, digging her fingers into Bai’s unprotected ribs to tickle her and then scooted away and to her feet before she could retaliate. “I’m going to go whip us up some face masks! I swear, you’re going to smell like cinnamon and honey for a straight up week, but your skin’s never going to be softer. Not that yours isn’t already,” she added with a little wink, walking to the kitchen on her heels, toes still wet.
Bai stretched contentedly as Steph waltzed (okay more of a pigeon-toed wobble) off to the kitchen to concoct these face masks. “If we smell like cinnamon and honey for a week we’re gonna have people buzzing around us!" she laughed. “I bet Mar’i and Roy would like that smell, and I’ve seen the way Damian eats baklava, he could give *me* a challenge when it comes to how fast he inhales it, I swear! You might get little teethmarks on your leg."
It was amazing how comfy Steph made her feel. Speedster business meant a lot of zinging, jangled nerves and specificity when it came to how and when and why they wanted to be touched, but Steph seemed to instinctively know where the limits intersected with the desire for more.
"Best summer EVER," Bai said to herself, quite pleased.