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She was used to the steady pressure of Bruce’s arms around her. They have saved each other enough times that she recognized the rough of his palm against hers, the firm angle of his shoulders, even softened under the padded shoulders of his tux. Surely if she had imagined anything for this night, this wayward trip to Paris on a hunch, on the tail of a playboy billionaire, it had been this. His hand pressed into the curve of her waist, the unfamiliar tilt of his smile, the distantly twinkling piano notes, fading into the Paris night. But then there had been a crash and a shout, and Diana had found herself holding someone decidedly more fragile. Softer.
To say Princess Audrey wasn’t like anyone she had met before would be an understatement, so Diana didn’t say anything at all. It was the way she moved through a crowd, swaying against the press of bodies, the pulse of the music. She didn’t walk the way a princess would, the stiff posturing that Diana so often felt herself slip into, even around her friends. Audrey knew her authority, there was no denying it, but it didn’t reach out in front of her, didn’t command the crowd to her service. Rather, it followed behind her, fluid, like an offering to those lucky enough to be caught in the eddies of her movements. There was something else Diana recognized in her, something deeper still, in the quiet green of her eyes. This place, this wild town, was her home. And Diana knew what it was like to loose a home.
So perhaps that’s why she stuck to her, amidst the chaos of sound and color, the sweaty sheen of the dance floor. Perhaps that’s why she smiled across the dance floor as she saw the Kaznian princess press up against on hapless man after another, sparkling with charm. It wasn’t natural for Diana, and it wasn’t comfortable, but she almost would have called it fun, if it had only been that. If the night had faded into strobe and beat and dance floor. But as soon as she flew Audrey out into the sudden cool of the night, Diana had felt that fun wouldn’t be the right word. Not for that night. Not when her grip on Audrey’s arms left Diana’s fingertips tracing the outward curve of her chest.
The pair touched down a few blocks away, in the dark dampness of an alley. The blue white of the moon was just enough for Diana to see the angles of Audrey’s face, the sharp features. Sinking back against the cold stone walls, the two of them collapsed into a fit of giggles, each bent double with laughter. Each catching the other out of the corner of her eye, wondering at the strangeness of the night. Superheroes weren’t supposed to dance. Princesses weren’t supposed to run away into the Paris evening. As if that mattered to them. As if they cared, when they were both of them not quite who they pretended to be by the light, and tomorrow was already too close to the horizon.
Diana flew them to the Eiffel Tower, and Audrey almost wanted to make fun of her for that. She knew a thousand other places they could go, quiet places, tender places, tucked away in attics and penthouses. She almost wanted to laugh, roll her eyes, to say that she had been to the Eiffel a hundred times, that the view had long since lost its luster in her eyes. But Audrey had been to those other, more intimate places a hundred times as well, and they felt cheap in comparison to the moonlight on Diana’s cheek, the glint of it in her eyes. There were stars dabbled across the blue black of midnight, and despite the chill, it felt like it would be wrong to be inside.
They kissed over Paris, Audrey insistent and Diana hesitating, each half lost in each other already. They kissed because it tasted like forgetting, running their tongues against unfamiliar lips. They kissed because it was weightlessness in a way different than flying, a brief moment of perfect balance, sweeter for the tipping. And tip they did, fading from the slow to the frantic, the tender to the more pressing searches. They searched each other’s bodies like treasure maps, like the blind reading braille, searching for answers or reasons or meaning, but finding only questions unfolded on uninterrupted skin.
This time, when Audrey laced her fingers through Diana’s hair, pulling her into a deep kiss, flesh against flesh, a warm tangle of limbs, she did not hesitate. Her fingers traced long forgotten patterns against Audrey’s curves, wondering at the edges of lust and love, wondering at the way things vanish. And the way they remain.
When morning came, Diana almost regretted taking them up to the Tower, because dawn reached them sooner there. She regretted loosing those few precious moments of darkness that the ground could have given them, the curl of Audrey’s naked body pressed into hers. As it is, the sun sliced down from the horizon, and Diana woke the sleeping woman as she untwined herself from her. They both have responsibilities to tend to, after all. They both have lives bigger than themselves.
Dressed, they watched morning drape itself over the streets below. Neither of them said anything for a long time, and when they did, it was not the things they really want to say. Those are the things they couldn’t say, the thoughts that they refused to give words to, for fear that once they started, they will never stop. They both knew the same weight, anyway, without speaking. When Diana said it was perfect, they both knew what she meant.
She meant it was perfect, the two of them.
She meant it was perfect, the trembling memories of the night.
She meant it was perfect, the way things ended in the morning light, because neither of them could afford anything more than just one night. Because when Diana told Audrey, softly, that she didn’t have to go through with it, didn’t have to marry him, it was a lie. Or more of a wish, than a lie, more of a dream. More of a bittersweet hope.
Audrey threw herself from the top of the Eiffel Tower, because she knew Diana will catch her.
And also because part of her hoped that she wouldn’t. She could think of no better last night, no better memory to hold close into the fading of death.
Of course, Diana did catch her, arms wrapping around a body both intimately familiar and completely unknown, by the daylight. She lowered them gently to the ground, because there was no going back up, not any more. There was no going back.
Audrey sighed reached over, tucking a stray curl of Diana’s hair back, fingers lingering on the woman’s cheek only moments longer than they needed to. But moments were everything, between them. Moments meant the world, moments stolen in those last traces of night.
Moments to hold in the cool of the night, alone. They had never expected anything more.