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“Who was that?”

Sirius Symboli was standing with one hand on her hip, pressing the edge of her phone to her lip, frowning. She didn’t quite process the question, much like she was still struggling to process the conversation that had just occurred. “Hm,” is all she has for an answer, once her brain catches up that some kind of response is warranted. She glares blankly at what she thinks is empty space, but once she notices movement, she realizes that she’d been making eye-contact with her companion (eye-contact that was uncomfortable enough that the girl shifted nervously and moved to pull the covers over herself). 

“If there’s someone else …” she begins.

“No, no, there’s not,” Sirius shakes her head, but doesn't take a single step towards the bed. Her response feels less like a reply and more like an answer to a question that’s been stirring somewhere in the back of her mind. Was there any reason for Shakur to say something like that?

It’s her companion’s turn to frown now. Sirius was more bronze-tongued than silver, but that was a raw, unabashed lie if she’s ever heard one. Where did she meet this girl again?

Oh, right, the concert. Sirius had been invited as a guest performer for an international symphony that happened to be performing in Moscow. Truth be told, she’d been invited to perform with them at least once a year, but that year in particular was the perfect excuse to visit her black-haired, tattoo-clad, brooding … friend. She didn’t even say the word out loud and still somehow it had a less than pleasant aftertaste. One thing led to another, she was cornered by another member of the orchestra, and the king-sized hotel bed amidst the ornately framed mirrors and prints of paintings felt much less frigid, the down pillows less likely to swallow her up. 

It’s not like it’s any different than before, she told herself, sitting down on the armchair by the bed, disregarding how scratchy it was against her bare skin. “It was … work,” Sirius lies again, an easy one to say because who in their right mind here understood Japanese that well? “Ruined my mood.” Not a lie. Two for one. Her little friend could decide which part was true, right now she needed a cigarette and time to ponder this some more. 

The natural solution would be to call Shakur again, but she felt that that would be useless. What would she say? “We need to talk?” Who’s we? her own voice and Shakur’s echoed in unison in her mind.

* * *

There’s no text or voicemail or even an elusive forwarded email in the morning. Sirius could swear on her life she remembered some show scheduled for this evening last time they talked, but there wasn’t any sign of life from any of Shakur’s socials. “Last online — 3am”, “Last seen — 2:45am”, so on and so forth. Did Sirius piss her off so bad she blocked her or threw her phone down some garbage chute? But what did she even do?

Taking it easy all day had never felt like more of a chore. She didn’t have her usual excuse to shake the previous night’s companion off — “Work called, I actually have a shoot in the afternoon and I’ll be too tired in the evening”?; Sirius didn’t even know where she would go. The afternoon was supposed to be spent unpacking in that one-bedroom apartment and distracting Shakur from getting ready for the night’s set, and then maybe loitering around some rusty, half-abandoned playground when it got dark, and then … oh, but God, this girl was stupid. 

Sirius wasn’t in the habit of questioning anyone’s intelligence (especially not Shakur’s, she’d seen the witchcraft that was winning a Double Crown by pure spite and a computer), but this girl? Sirius spent the whole day forgetting what her name even was — Anya, Anastasiya, Alisa …? but in turn, she acted like there wasn’t a worry in the world, pulling her along between street markets and Balenciaga shop windows no matter how little interest she showed. She was cute, for whatever it was worth, what with those freckles and green eyes, and whatever it was that made human girls so fascinated seeing that righthand earring up close. 

Past noon, and still nothing.

“What kind of perfume do you like?” Sirius suddenly asks, coming to, amidst the warm lights and the glass shelves of a Calvin Klein perfume section. 

“Oh,” the girl flinches, almost like she didn’t even expect Sirius to ever escape whatever daze she’d been in up until this point. “Well, what do you like? I wouldn’t get anything you wouldn’t want me to wear.”

I see you twice a year if you’re lucky, Sirius scoffs under her breath at the logic in decision-making here, but she hides it under a chuckle at a memory. 

“You smell like … my little sister when she puts on every perfume she got for her birthday at once,” Shakur winced, helicopter ears at the ready even after what she’d never admit was a prolonged embrace (“It was cold!” she’d said). 

“The money I’d pay to have you say that at one of the parties I was at last month …” Sirius laughed and shook her head. “You know how much money people pay for just a sampler of this?”

“You swimming in a vat of tease would smell better.” 

Sirius considers the fancy crystal-cut glass vials they’re looking at, rubbing her chin like she’s deep in thought. They’re all overpriced bathroom decorations, really, at the cost of a whole new remodeled bathroom. She’s half-convinced that these are just mark-ups for the brand name while being cheap imitations of what the scents actually should be, and all probably smell like convenience store deodorant, but picks one of them up anyway to read the description just to pretend like she’s deliberating and not about to pick the most expensive one for show when something catches her eye: 

WARNING: ‘Musk’ induced by trace amount of cloprostenol. Please see further health advisory information at … 

“How about this?” Sirius holds it out to the girl, who’s already blushing. She definitely doesn’t know what it’s supposed to smell like either, but she can read a price-tag at the very least. 

“But it’s expensive …” she shifts the heavy bottle around in her hands, studying the perfume inside like it’s some glistening magic potion. 

Well, it might as well be, in its own way. “It’d be well worth it,” Sirius winks. That’s all this girl needs to hear to happily nod, and that’s all Sirius needs to see to follow her to the cashier and then get some fresh air again. She doesn’t need to smell any of that shit to already feel something primal tingling in the corners of her jaw. If they stayed in there any longer she’d start knocking those displays down, reveling in the glass shards scraping at her knuckles. Who the fuck did that scrawny rat even think she was? 

It feels wrong to actually get an uninterrupted practice set in before the real deal tonight. It gets so boring, she even decides to stream it online, much to the elated comments of all her fans, but that doesn’t soothe her nearly as much as it usually does when she feels alone. So you admit it— if Sirius wasn’t here to bother her, she was her own worst interruptor. She turned off her soundboard and began to pace her apartment, popping her knuckles to the tempo of the creaking floorboards. 

So what if that’s how things usually went! So what if they’ve always met on the second night — see how she entertains herself now that she doesn’t have a personal invitation to a private club, fuck the money you spent to fly out here— Shakur’s jaw aches from gritting her teeth. She needs a shower, needs to pick out an outfit, needs to eat something other than glucose capsules for the first time in three days so she doesn't have a massive hangover once she gets home. She's gonna hear people cheering and singing along and the dull tremor of them jumping in time to her set through her headphones and feel her heart hammer in her ears almost like she was losing herself on the track again. She doesn't need that brute with her hulking shoulders and glassy violet eyes, stupid shit-eating grin interrupting a kiss she’d meant to—

* * *

“Got a light?” bleach-blonde hair and a plastic wire choker; largely dissimilar to the chestnut haired princess she could pretend she’s imitating, and entirely unlike the dark bay stud that’d just slide her hand into her back pocket regardless — perfect. Or something. 

Shakur actually wants to go home. But home is empty, an unmade bed she didn’t bother tidying before she rushed out the door to catch the metro, and a bath she needs to fill herself, so she leans over with her cigarette to share its freshly-lit edge with the stranger. 

“You kinda look like that DJ that was up not too long ago,” the girl leans on the wall, squinting, like you could make out anything between the smoke and strobe lights to begin with.

“What would you do if I didn’t just look like him?” Shakur flicks her right ear with one finger to bring her wolfish ears to the girl’s attention. There’s a pleasantly surprised smile on the girl’s lips. Never done it with a horse girl before, is refracted all over her glassy eyes. Shakur can’t really discern if it’s unadulterated excitement, alcohol, some illicit substance, or all three that’s making the girl’s pupils as blown out as they are, and she doesn’t care either. 

“Well, I’d tell … her,” and she makes a show out of looking the DJ herself up and down. “I’d tell her that she ought to come down to the dancefloor along with everyone else — not a single guy pulling his shirt off out there looks even half as handsome.” 

“Is that right?” Shakur flashes her teeth, which usually makes humans do a double-take, whether they were checking her out or not, but the girl swallows anything but nerves. “Kinda sounds like a pain in the ass, rubbing elbows with all those people … I like my spot at the soundboard better.”

“So, what, you just slip on off home after your set ends?” The girl moves closer, clearly thinking that blowing smoke in Shakur’s general direction was some kind of attractive move and not making both of their eyes excessively water. 

“Do you have a reason for me not to?” Shakur cocks her head. 

She can feel the boosted bass through the solid concrete of the wall she’s up against. It’s not like this girl had anywhere near a percent of the strength needed to push her against it, but she’s too lazy to make any kind of display of strength out of it — it’s not like it’s going to matter. She didn’t even drink anything and her head already felt like it was going to split open. The most she was gonna get out of this was holding this girl’s hair while she unloaded her guts over the graffiti’d toilet that no sane person should even approach, but even that isn’t strictly necessary since it falls just an inch past the girl’s ears. Got everything you wanted? the devil on her shoulder rested its head on one hand and gave her a bored expression. It was hard to pretend like this was even better than the empty apartment at this point. The blonde girl was doing everything to saddle her thigh somehow, and yet it stirred nothing but mild irritation in her as she remembered that her knees were a little sore from sleeping in a weird position the other night.

“H-Hey, hold on,” Shakur makes sure to push against the girl’s chest very gently, so that it doesn't register like an outright shove, before reaching for her phone.

“What, you got somewhere to be, lone wolf?” Whatever this girl took earlier, she’s close to completely gone and no matter how Shakur turned it in her head, shaking her off without it turning into some kind of public nuisance would be one headache in a list of many (including, but not limited to, that her lock screen was completely empty, save for the embarrassingly early late night hour). The earlier anger had returned. Well, so be it. 

“Nowhere at all,” Shakur shrugs, and lets the girl lean up against her once more. 

But you know, being angry always has this way of starkly reminding you of why exactly you’re angry, and even if a human’s strength was nowhere near that of the finely-chiseled forearms of one broad-shouldered fellow horse girl, that’s about the only thing she could think about while trembling fingers tugged at the base of her shaggy mullet. If only, right? the devil on her shoulder rolls its eyes. Fuck you want me to do about it? Shakur wants at least a second to think or breathe, but for any gesture she tries to make, that request is flatly ignored. What was I supposed to do? Tell her? Start crying over the phone like some pathetic little summer girl?

It’s long overdue, no? the angel on the opposite shoulder, suddenly breaks its years-lasting silence. 

“Oh, fuck.”

“Huh?” The stranger looks at Shakur with confusion, who, while only reciprocating half-heartedly up until this point, has completely disconnected from anything that was happening. The only thing on her mind is the confident strut of a mahogany-haired horse-girl who’s only pretending like she doesn’t know where she’s going, black button-up with rolled up sleeves half undone and golden chain glistening across her lush chest. The blonde girl clumsily spins around to see what her happenstance companion was looking at. “Who the fuck are you?” she yells over the music, even though any horse-girl could hear her just fine even if she spoke barely above a whisper.

“‘Fuck you think you are to ask me that?” Sirius Symboli puts her hands in her pockets and slightly bends over despite not being that much taller, putting on that Russian mobster voice that Shakur envied for sticky situations. “You even know her name?”

The girl takes a nervous step back, and finding the wall, decides that “fight” rather than “flight” is somehow the correct answer. Of course, all Sirius has to do is catch her effortlessly by the wrist for any confidence to instantly dissipate. “Try that again and I’m breaking your arm,” Sirius brings her face very close to the other girl’s, almost as if she’s threatening a kiss, and then shoves her back out into the crowd. That was the last they’d see of her. 

Sirius clears her throat, rocking on the balls of her feet and assuming a more normal posture, the dark glower replaced with a lopsided grin. “Didn’t think I’d ever be your knight in shining armor.”

“In your dreams,” Shakur curls her lip, snorting. 

“I don’t know, you’re kinda looking at me like a kicked puppy,” Sirius’s gaze softens, the slightest ghost of genuine worry on her brow. “You wanna talk here or outside?”

Shakur pins her ears. She doesn’t have a retort. This is as straight and to the point as she could’ve ever hoped (or dreaded). “We can talk here. It’s like 5 degrees out there and I don’t wanna go backstage to grab my jacket right now.”

“Fair enough,” Sirius rubs the back of her neck observing her palm as if expecting to find something there. Under a happenstance flash of light, Shakur realizes that it’s all sweat.

“Did you run here?” Shakur asks, pointing her chin at the sight. 

“Yeah … yeah something like that,” Sirius shrugs. Shakur isn’t sure what the hell that‘s supposed to mean but she doesn’t question it, not when her heart and stomach are doing relieved somersaults befit of the gravity you’d find on the moon. She wants to hug her, she wants to crack a joke and punch her in the arm in a friendly sort of way and get all the same in turn. Instead she sniffs, and looks down at her shoes.

“How’d you find me?”

“Not too many Russian artists out there with the nickname ‘DJ Monad’,” Sirius says matter-of-fact, and walks over to lean against the wall next to her. She doesn’t force Shakur to look at her, and instead studies the wall opposite them. There’s a lull in the music, a purposeful chunk of tracks just for slow-dancing and buying drinks and not feeling too guilty about leaving.

“Oh, yeah, makes sense,” Shakur bites the inside of her lip, although not hard enough to draw blood. Even if none of this warrants that, though, there’s no way she can leave empty-handed. “I … I wanted you to come over last night,” she says, very quietly, her voice breaking just because smoking a little too often within the last 24 hours has given her voice a bit more edge, thorn, and rasp than usual. 

“I … figured as much,” Sirius says, but her ears are perked.

“Why didn’t you then?”

“I told you, I had someone with me—”

“Who?”

Sirius raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Does it … matter?”

“If she calls right now, what are you telling her?” Shakur crosses her arms, tail lashing in frustration.

“I’m not — she’s not gonna call, Shak, I—”

“It’s a hypothetical question, moron!” 

“Alright, alright, I—I’d … that I was busy?”

“And you’d promise to see her the next night?”

“No, I’d … I’d ask you, maybe, but—”

“‘Something came up’, code for ‘I have another girl to fuck tomorrow’, right? That’s what you tell all of them, don’t you?!”

“I could never say that to you,” Sirius’s ears droop, and her mouth lightly opens with a small gasp. Despite her cool and aloof air, she looks hurt, the kind of hurt with which a cat looks at you when you’d accidentally stepped on their tail. 

“No?!” Shakur doesn’t know if it’s a rhetorical, argumentative ‘no’, or if it’s the most desperate question of her life, begging for reassurance. “If I asked you to stay …” every contour of her tattoos begins to itch at once. Was she sure she wasn’t drunk? Don’t look at me like that, even I can’t believe a word I’m saying, Shakur couldn’t meet Sirius’s eyes.

If she could, though, she would certainly see shock, sure. Anyone who’s ever known her for probably more than a minute or two would probably give her much the same look. But it wasn’t just that. Sirius’s breath quickens, her shoulders drop, and before either of them can come to terms with the implication, Shakur is back flat against the wall, for once against her immediate will.

Fuck, I’ve missed you, she doesn’t say it not because she doesn’t want to, but because with how deeply Sirius kisses her, she can’t, and how she moans into her mouth when those rough hands are snaking up her ribs, she doesn’t have to. Smelling that sun-warmed cedar honey scent that she dreams about no matter how frequently she washes her sheets, feeling every rippling muscle of her shoulders just polite enough to not tear through the fine cotton fabric that rests on them, all of it sends her into such a state of repose that she could cry. The music picks up again, and this time it’s right in time with her heartbeat, along with the pulse she feels beneath her fingers when she cups Sirius’s face and jaw and rests a stray finger against her neck. She doesn’t quite know where she ends and where Sirius begins — she’s got to hand it to whoever is in charge of the lights in this club, if their thesis with this is a picture-perfect rendition of a good trip, then they’ve really got it down to a science. Any hesitation and nonchalance that she was plagued with before is completely gone, and she relishes in every point of contact she’s got. Every—?

“Sirius … hey,” Shakur has to catch her by the lower jaw to get her mind out of wherever that one track it had was set on being the destination. “What the fuck is that?” she directs their gaze at the space between them, veering more towards Sirius. 

“Oh, that’s …” Sirius looks almost guilty for a second, but breaks into a throaty laugh. “Might’ve gotten a whiff of tease before I got here.”

“That’s one way to say you’re happy to see me, unless …” Shakur pulls her head back slightly, lips tightening in suspicion.

“Just because I ran here simultaneously zipping up my pants doesn’t mean I ever got to playing stud five minutes ago,” Sirius scoffs. “That’s all yours if you want it.”

Shakur felt her tail raise slightly, brushing involuntarily against the wall behind her before she could even muster a proper answer. They’d done it … frankly, a disgusting number of different ways before, but never like this, with the funniest part being that the booming music and bustling club and hallway full of seemingly similarly-minded people wasn’t even the novelty.

“How long are you gonna be like that?” Shakur asks, using the conversation as an excuse to hug her for a little bit. 

“What, you want to take it to go?” Sirius nips at Shakur’s exposed shoulder as her oversized T-shirt conveniently slipped to the side. “Don’t have any room right now?”

Shakur feels her face grow hot. The comment is embarrassing enough, but it’s mostly the silent prayers her body is sending for Sirius to keep inching her hand down her boxers, to relieve that itch that she never could (let alone anyone else). It seems to be the night of Sirius rendering her speechless, because she has nothing to say to Sirius effortlessly running her calloused fingers along her folds, bluntly massaging over the most sensitive part just long enough to make her knees buckle. “Who’s happier to see who right now, I wonder?” she whispers, a sound that Shakur could only really feel somewhere in her chest when the music galloped through the whole foundation of the brutalist concrete building.

Both of them know the answer to that question, spurring on only the haphazard loosening of drawstrings and unfastening of belts between kisses that were more teeth and tongue than lip. Like anything the two of them set out to do (purposefully or not), it is simultaneously breakneck and agonizingly slow, and that’s about exactly how it feels as Shakur has to contend with the sensation of being stretched further open than any number of Sirius’s fingers had done so in the past, parallel to the stray droplet of her own agitation rolling down the inside of her bared leg.

With the way the light behind her eyelids keeps changing colors and Sirius is growling with pleasure over every inch she gets to bury, she would’ve told anyone describing the scene to her even a minute ago to go fuck themselves, and yet the sweet ache of having the other stallion so close to her while still nestled between both of those massive biceps was a feeling much too intoxicating to be the wistful fantasy stumbled upon in sleep. 

Whatever you’d call this fucked up position they’d assumed here, it’s putting maximum strain on every single muscle in Sirius’s body and Shakur loves it — the way her forelock is already plastered in part to her face, and the straining stitching of her blouse, all of it just makes her wonder if this is how she is for her now, what is she gonna see once she’s slathered all over Sirius’s thighs, and just how ready she’ll be to shake down the nearest dealer-looking guy she finds to buy something that’ll keep Sirius in this rut well past dawn. 

“You okay?” Sirius somehow has enough sanity to ask, resting her cheek against Shakur’s akin to taking a knee to catch your breath while climbing a mountain. 

“Are you tired already?” Shakur licks up Sirius’s neck, tasting nothing but salt. “Thought you’d last a little longer than that …”

“I’m a little bigger than any strap we’ve ever bought, you know,” Sirius stifles a moan that would forgo this little check-in and have this turn into a scene that would give significantly more grounds for kicking them out than any of the other hallway wall occupants. 

“I don’t remember you ever asking before sizing up before.” She’s at her mercy, like always, but there’s something different about Sirius’s hesitation here — less like a dare and more like a wedding night. Is that what that would look like, too? Too!? —

“You’re usually too wet to care,” Sirius pries one of Shakur’s legs down so she can have some leverage, and gets the answer she needs from the hooded-eyed look she sees beneath the eyebrow piercing and overgrown black bangs. Shakur can’t decide whether she wants to kiss her or have her flip her around and make her forget both of their names, but the Lone Star Sirius Symboli is nothing if not multi-talented, and surely rocking her hips to get her going will have a sufficiently favorable result. 

On the subject of stars, Shakur’s seeing them, eyes opened or closed. If her nails were any longer, then surely she’d have clawed past the fine fabric of Sirius’s shirt and down into skin and muscle. The way she’s biting her, she finally can’t deny the vampire allegations she’s always gotten, but it’s about all she can do to keep her voice down, else the uncharacteristically high-pitched moans would be something that she’d never live down. All that and Sirius doesn’t seem to care (not that any of it is an indicator that she should stop). A strap eventually gets boring — the friction starts to sting or it just feels like you’re too far apart, but this is addicting, the way Sirius is warm, the way any movement or squeeze she makes means Sirius is groaning against her ear and her breath hitches in her throat. It means Shakur doesn’t want her to stop until both of them are spent and are going to have legs more sore than any hard day at Tracen had ever rendered them. No top speed she’s ever reached, no finish line ever crossed, comes close to the cloud nine she’s on, knowing the chorus of sounds they’d hear if this next DJ’s set wasn’t in its full chaotic remix swing and there wasn’t a fight somewhere at the front door. 

Sirius’s knees slightly tremble, and Shakur knows damn well it’s not because she’s tired (be they both horse-girls or not, Sirius has built herself for bench pressing automobiles all day if given the choice). She buries one hand in her hair, pulling at her scalp and not caring if Sirius will complain later that her hair got ruined — she needs her closer, she needs to feel this with every inch of her skin. 

“Should I …?” Sirius pauses, shoulders heaving so much, it’s more breath than voice. 

“No, no, no, please,” Shakur could cry if she didn’t feel so good (or maybe exactly because she did). Don’t leave me now, don’t leave me ever, if you let go of me right now I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll—

“Mm … f—uck!” If the wall behind them was made out of a material even a hair softer, there’d be a suspiciously Shakur-shaped imprint in it, so close she pressed against her as she finally came undone. The last song came to an end, the lights slowly dimming with it. It would only be cornier if someone had set off fireworks outside, but it was just March, grey skies that only foreshadowed rebirth still a few months from now. 

“Why are you pulling out …?” Shakur whines, wanting to keep Sirius in and around her longer before the draft from the constantly opening front door would start to nip at her pale, thin skin. 

“You skipped biology just to rot in the computer lab?” Sirius wipes her palm over Shakur’s nether, making her hiss and flinch, but at least leaving a clean enough environment for her to pull her pants back up after wiping it on Shakur’s own shirt. The sinewy horse girl doesn’t have much of a response as she’s busy contending with the cold semi-adhesive that’s touching her stomach now after Sirius had decided to use her T-shirt as a towel. “It was just perfume, it’s not like I snorted a whole line of it,” Sirius continues, zipping her own pants back up, shifting her weight at the absence of external weight. “If I did, I don’t think there’d be anything left of you,” she adds with a smirk, to which she gets a more customary roll of the eyes and spitting at the floor.

They stop by Sirius’s hotel to grab her suitcase and confirm an early check-out, then circle back around to Shakur’s apartment. They’re both exhausted, but Sirius chooses to rummage through the cupboard and counter excuse for a kitchen to make tea, lest her scrawny friend shiver all through the morning and still refuse to let her go when they’re up by the afternoon. She sits on the floor, back hunched and half-asleep while leaning her head on one hand, the low table being the only distinctly Japanese thing in the tiny abode. In its own way, it feels like home, whatever that’s ever meant to mean. 

Maybe they’d talk about it later. For now, Shakur just sloppily holds back a tired smile as she’s offered a chipped mug. For now, that’s enough.