Work Text:
Pitch black, pale blue
It was a stained glass variation of the truth
...
I wanna love you but I don't know how
- Neptune by Sleeping At Last
It’s a Tuesday night when he kisses her.
They’re sat down on a wicker loveseat, the night sky above them and the blow up pool at their feet. Whoever dressed him today must have known what they were doing because his hair is all fluffed up and he’s wearing this black and white jacket that she really wants to steal. The air is chilly, and she could use it, especially since someone decided to put her in a skirt, but she supposes she can manage. She’s definitely had worse.
So, all in all, Solar’s neither excited nor dreading it. It’s just another thing - a thing which she will have to process through work and sleep and maybe a movie or two, but a thing nonetheless. She’s had so many things with him at this point that there’s a whole vault in her mind for them. A vault she sealed up the moment he looked at her in the pool two months ago and said his wish was that things were never going to change.
That’s why she’d been so surprised when the producers had approached her and asked her about this. It would be something special, they said - a perfect birthday surprise. Solar was allowed to say no, but she didn’t. She doesn’t mind, really; she’s kissed other people before. None of them have to mean anything unless she lets them, and she’s not going to, because if she does even a little bit, it’s going to eat her up from the inside.
They never give either of them lines to say, just… suggestions. Ideas for how things should play out. “Write him a letter,” they’ll say. “Be honest.” As if she was ever good at lying to anyone but herself. Tonight, they’ve asked for the kiss to be presented as a gift. It goes along with his other, completely contradictory, wish from that night, so no one’s going to suspect the terms of the whole thing were decided between agents and producers, not the people actually doing the kissing. To be fair, sometimes she forgets the terms when she’s filming too.
Eric asks her about her comeback, and she loves the way his eyes will follow her every move when she talks. At first she’d thought he was just being polite, but, over the time they’ve spent together, she’s come to learn he actually listens. Not a whole lot of people outside her company will listen to her get excited about music the way he will. “It has a special theme,” she hints, for both him and those at home. “A new concept for us.”
“New hair too?” he guesses.
“Shhh,” she responds, as if it isn’t common knowledge that new hair means they’re about to have a comeback. “It’s a secret.”
Moments like this she’ll forget about the ten or twenty people around them with cameras and lights and make up. Moments like this it almost feels like it’s real. Like they’re just two people sitting together, catching up, and trying to swallow their feelings. Well, they are, but they’re also more than that. And she’s not sure he has any feelings to swallow.
They catch up, and then someone signals for them to wrap it up, so they do. And then she brings out the cake.
They’ve eaten so much cake together this past month. They’ve been given so much cake in the past month. Still, she customised this one for him (although, she didn’t bake it because everyone knows that would’ve been a disaster) without anyone else’s help. The person at the counter of the shop gave her this terrible knowing smile when she did so. Solar had hoped she wasn’t that obvious.
“It’s to make up for the one that got ruined,” she tells him, wincing at all the ways her last attempt to surprise him went wrong.
“It wasn’t ruined,” Eric assures her. “Just a little smushed. There’s nothing wrong with that.” She doesn’t understand how he can brush off all her shortcomings so easily, but he does, every time. And then he looks at her with eyes like melted chocolate and she tries not to feel anything at all. “This one is very beautiful, though, so thank you.”
They light the candles together, and they give off tiny fireworks in the dark. Solar doesn’t even have to be behind the camera to know how beautiful it all must look. She’s been filming things for long enough now to recognize the faces the cameramen make when things are going well. When she finishes singing for him again, he helps her cut the cake as well, hands surprisingly warm for the cold night.
Before she even knows what he’s doing, there’s a dollop of frosting on her nose. She screams, and then lunges, wiping a smear of the chocolate onto his cheek. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she can hear the lovely makeup person screaming, but no one’s telling them to stop yet, so they keep going. Soon each of them have three cake-related battle scars to show off.
These are the better moments, she thinks. She’s always loved this show, but the skinship gets overrated every now and then. It’s the spontaneous, heartfelt ones that really get to her now that she’s been behind the camera herself. Especially when she’s a part of them.
He feeds her a slice and she gives him one in return. Feeding Eric has become such a regular thing that she does it without thinking now. In a way, Solar supposes, it’s how they take care of each other. You make sure I’m eating and I’ll make sure you are too. Little things like that. Real things.
He has frosting on his lip. That part wasn’t scripted, but it fits. She looks at it and takes it in and goes with it.
“I have another gift for you,” Solar says, and Eric manages to feign ignorance by sending her this terrible grateful smile. He looks less like he doesn’t know and more like he doesn’t really still believe it’s going to happen. She almost second guesses herself, but then finds her confidence again. It is going to happen now, if only to prove that it can, that it doesn’t have to mean anything if she doesn’t want it to.
She does want it to, though; she very much does want it to mean something, but she’ll settle for a stiff resolve instead.
Then, she leans in, aiming for the frosting on his lip.
The kiss is so soft she’s almost afraid he doesn’t realize what’s going on - impossible since she’s pretty sure he had a whole meeting with his manager about it, but that’s just how it feels. Then Eric sighs into it, and that was definitely not discussed in the meeting because he wasn’t supposed to kiss her back.
It’s a Tuesday night when he kisses her. His lips taste like chocolate and when his teeth just barely graze her lower lip she feels like she might dissolve right there on the spot because he’s just so good at it her fingers can’t help but curl.
And then, he stops, and she pulls away like she was supposed to: slowly and surely. Solar doesn’t dare open her eyes until she’s sitting straight again. She takes a deep breath, trying to push everything away before she has to face him, and looks up.
As soon as they make eye contact Solar starts laughing - she can’t help it. She’s embarrassed and flustered and Eric must be too because his ears are bright red, but it’s done. It’s completely messed her up inside, but it’s done. In a way, she feels a sense of relief about the whole thing.
“Happy birthday,” Solar says, when she’s gotten her laughter under control. Her breath is still erratic, but that makes perfect sense considering he just broke that wall between real and not real. Everything them hangs in the air around, and it’s heavy on her shoulders, despite the light atmosphere.
“Thank you,” he responds, and he looks like he means it too, with the way he can’t seem to stop staring at her.
Later, when the cameras turn off, Eric offers Solar his hand and helps her stand. Once she has, he opens his mouth like he’s going to say something and then closes it. She nudges him, suddenly feeling very shy.
“What?” she asks.
He sighs. “I was going to say you didn’t have to, but-”
“I wanted to.” Solar doesn’t know what’s come over her. Every action feels on impulse. It’s not like she’s lying, though. “It will make a good scene,” she decides. They walk together for another moment before she speaks again. “I didn’t know you were going to kiss me back, though.”
Eric’s arm comes up to scratch the back of his head. “Yeah, um. I didn’t know that was going to happen either.”
“Oh,” is all she can manage. So he wanted to kiss her. Or he decided it would be a good idea last second. Or… she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know anything. Solar feels turned around and dizzy and the fact that for some reason they’re still holding hands isn’t helping.
He seems to notice at the same time she does, though, and they both quickly let go, only for her to realize how cold her fingers feel without his between them. Or maybe it’s just the chill in the air. Solar rubs her arms, hoping it’ll be warmer inside.
“Are you cold?” Eric asks. “Because… here.” He takes off his jacket and drapes it around her shoulders. He’s just being nice, she reminds herself. That’s what he does. He shudders a little bit at the cold. “I don’t know how you’re doing this in a skirt.”
Solar doesn’t know how to tell him that she’s a lot less concerned about losing feeling in her legs than she is about the fact that her mental vault currently does not seem to be working. Everything is slipping through the cracks of her careful cages. She knows how to deal with walking in the cold; she doesn’t know how to deal with her feelings.
Even so, she shoots him a smile. “Don’t worry about me,” she says. “I’m used to it.”
Eric stops walking, and turns to her, hands tucked in the pocket of his jeans. “I do worry about you, though. Especially with your comeback coming up. I know how hard it can be to manage everything.”
That’s putting it lightly. Solar’s good at losing herself in her work, though: at letting everything fade away into a quiet delirium of performances and lack of sleep until she gets lost in the music. Despite the dying of the hair, she’s of the opinion the real transformation comes after the comeback. After all, there’s no way she would have pictured herself here before their last one.
Here. Here standing on the path with him, his jacket around her shoulders, acting like he didn’t just kiss her back. She nudges him again. “We should go offer some of that cake to the crew” Solar prompts, as if she didn’t hear what he just said. “They’ve been working hard too.”
Eric nods, but his eyes look kind of far away again. “Okay,” he agrees, and they begin to walk back, the distance between them feeling further than it has all night.
“Did you mean what you said, that night?” she asks him, when they’re about to walk back into the lights.
“What night?” he asks. “We’ve spent a lot of them together.”
“In the pool. When you asked for things not to change.”
He looks at her, and she wonders if there’s a pain behind his eyes too. “I don’t know,” Eric tells her. “It all depends.”
Solar doesn’t ask any further questions. She’s too tired to wonder about what depends on what right now. She’ll ask him later, probably over the phone, when there’s no cameras around to confuse her and no other dimension of reality where she doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not. For now, though, she goes through the motions, and then she’s in the car, going home.
She doesn’t even realize she still has his jacket until she’s in the hallway of her apartment building and unlocking the door. She contemplates taking it off, but there’s no reason to now, not when he’s halfway across the city - if not the country - by now.
She’ll hold onto it, she decides. For a little while, at least. So that maybe, when it’s all over, she’ll have an excuse to see him one last time. One last awkward conversation where they’ll both be forced to remember every little detail, down to the frosting.
It’s a Tuesday night when he kisses her, and all her dreams begin to taste like chocolate.