fellowshippers | FIC: Mermaids, Singing (MO/CB, R, 1/1)

TITLE: Mermaids, Singing
AUTHOR: Gloria Mundi (viva_gloria@livejournal.com) <--yes, she's ba-ack!
PAIRING: MO/CB
RATING: R
SUMMARY: On how to tell if it's fresh enough for sushi.
FEEDBACK: Yes please
DISCLAIMER: A work of fiction: I made it up.
WARNING: girlslash: PWP: unhygienic kitchen practices
SPOILERS: The Two Towers, slightly.
ARCHIVE: List archives, CTB and Imagin'd Glories only, please

It was eight o'clock on a hazy summer Saturday, and a fisherman on the quay was whistling 'Oh, what a beautiful morning'. He was whistling that particular song because he'd just sold part of last night's catch, at about double the normal rate, to two young, blonde, Australian women. Hadn't really looked at their faces, but the one in the green dress had some fancy shoes. He'd adjusted his prices accordingly, and the one in blue jeans had handed over the cash without batting an eyelid.

He spat dismissively into the harbour. Bloody tourists.

Miranda, carrying an imperfectly-wrapped newspaper package of raw and bleeding fish, was giggling like a six-year-old.

"What is it?" demanded Cate. "Did you get blood on -"

"No, nothing," said Miranda, red-faced with the effort of not laughing. "Tell you in a minute."

They were halfway up the quayside before she could speak. "Look," she said to Cate. "Look at this."

"It's a kilo of tuna. It's bleeding. You should -"

"No. Not the parcel. Look at the paper."

From Queen of England to Queen of Elfland, ran the headline. The picture showed a bead-trimmed Cate in Elizabethan ruff and diadem. Her expression was right up there with Galadriel in the haughtiness stakes. Fish-blood oozed messily through the newsprint and onto Miranda's skin.

"Peter'll have a fit," said Cate, "if they call it Elfland."

"Never mind that. D'you think that bloke recognised you? D'you think he did it on purpose?"

Cate shrugged. "I don't look much like that at the moment, do I? I'm a mess off-duty."

"A mess?" said Miranda, wondering what planet Cate thought she was on. "I wouldn't go that far. Did you put on suncream? You'll burn."

"White as a fish's belly, that's me," said Cate. "You're lucky to tan so easily."

"Yep." Miranda turned a tanned arm pale side up, examining the demarcation. "And Peter doesn't mind. It's okay for Eowyn to look like she’s been out in the sun." She unlocked the car. "Let me put a rug down before you put the fish in. I don't want people thinking I'm a serial killer or something."

Cate watched her lean into the back of the car, spreading a green tartan rug over the seat. The swell of her calves recurved and narrowed to elegant, tanned thighs. Miranda's green chiffon dress shimmered green and blue as she moved, and the silvery underskirt clung to her skin. Cate's focus narrowed to angles and apexes and ... and staring at her friend's legs.

"You look hot," said Miranda, observing the sudden vivid flush on Cate's pale skin. "Let's get going."

The traffic in town was light. Miranda sang along to a song on the radio, and Cate tried not to be irritated. It was Miranda's car, after all. She looked askance at Miranda's tanned arm, at her hand comfortably on the gearstick, at her short, neat fingernails and her lack of rings. How had she got through drama school without being able to hold a note?

"What time are the guys coming over?" Miranda said when the weather report came on.

"Not till noon at least," said Cate. "I get the impression they were planning on a late night yesterday."

"Oh." Miranda bit her lip, easing the car between a double-parked pickup and the oncoming bus. "Does that mean they're going to have raging hangovers again? Because maybe sushi isn't the best thing -"

"They'll be fine," said Cate firmly. "Anyway, there's plenty of salad and rice. I did the rice earlier... You need to turn left here."

The turn was rather abrupt, and Cate gulped. But after that the road was empty, and the DJ played a song Miranda didn't know. And by the time that was over, they'd pulled up outside Cate's house.

Cate ran up the steps with a bag in each hand and unlocked the door, and Miranda took the rest of their shopping and followed more slowly. "What do you want me to do?" she said, arriving in the kitchen and heaping parcels on the counter.

Cate looked at her thoughtfully, and said nothing. She'd picked a peach out of the bowl, and Miranda could smell the bruised fruit warming in her friend's hand. She swallowed.

"Sorry?" said Cate, and blinked. "Oh ... could you shell the prawns?"

"Sure," said Miranda. She rinsed her hands under the cold tap, and located the prawns in a brown paper bag. The kitchen was cool and dim, and there were spider-plants and aspidistras and yucca cuttings all along the windowsill. It was rather like being in an aquarium. Outside, the sun scorched the last of the dew from the lawn. "We going to eat out on the deck?"

Cate shrugged. She pulled off her jumper, and there was nothing underneath but blue-veined bare skin: she wasn't wearing a bra. Miranda caught herself staring. "It's warmed up really fast," said Cate.

"Um," agreed Miranda.

Cate picked a strappy silvery tank-top from the pile of folded garments on the ironing board. "See anything you like?" she said from inside it.

Miranda tried to work out what Cate might really have said. Obviously not what Miranda thought she'd heard. Something about the food? She made a non-committal noise. Cate, straightening straps, gave her a sly look. Miranda blushed, and turned the cold tap on full. Icy water splashed over her arms. It was a diversion.

The prawns smelt of the sea. She rinsed them under the tap, washing away brittle pink prawn-legs and antennae and dumping handfuls of washed crustacean in a colander on the draining board. She watched Cate's ghostly reflection in the window, against the heavy blue sky, as the other woman unwrapped mackerel and eel and tuna. She thought she could feel Cate's location, too, as something halfway between an itch and a burn on her back: like radar or sonar, like a proximity alert.

"Here's a bowl for them," said Cate. "I thought I'd do a dipping sauce: something with lemongrass. What d'you think?"

"Sounds good to me." Miranda topped and tailed a prawn with two expert pinches. She dug her thumbnail under the translucent carapace and peeled the legs and shell away from the body, which she bit in half. "Mmm. Fresh! Want some?"

Cate grinned. "Of course it's fresh! Last night's catch, he said. Boiled on the boat."

"Ah yes," said Miranda, "but you can't always go by what you're told, can you? Sometimes you have to rely on your own senses." She held out the half-prawn, like a tender pink worm, to the other woman. "Don't you think?"

Cate bent her head and closed her teeth on the morsel. She didn't look at what she was eating. Her wicked blue gaze remained fixed on Miranda. "Mmm," she said. It might have been agreement, or appreciation. It might have been approval or affirmation, or anything. Appetite, Miranda thought. And she's eating out of my hand.

"It's like the fish," Cate added, straightening up. "They told me it was fresh. It looks pretty fresh to me. But you know how you can tell if it's fresh enough to eat raw?"

"No idea," lied Miranda, who'd learnt the basics of sushi preparation when she was fifteen.

"You prod it," said Cate. "To see if it's firm. Like this."

"Ow! I'm not a fish."

"Really? ... Look, you've got scales."

It was true. Cate had unwrapped the mackerel, and she hadn't washed her hands. Now silvery-blue scales clung like primitive disco glitter to the skin above Miranda's left breast. Not very far above Miranda's left breast, actually. "I'm a mermaid," said Miranda, and laughed wildly.

"That'll be a coup for my sushi party," said Cate, smirking. "Bet the boys'll gobble you up."

"I doubt it," Miranda said dryly. "From the sound of it, they're keeping each other entertained."

"All of them?" said Cate. "How dull." She came past Miranda to rinse her hands at the sink. The hairs on Miranda's arms stood up and oscillated towards Cate, like anemone tentacles in a current. It tickled.

"Oh, I don't know. It keeps things simpler in the long run. Not that you'd care about that sort of thing any more." Miranda peeled another prawn. She licked clumps of sweet, gritty roe from her fingers.

"Why ever not?" said Cate. "Being married doesn't stop me looking at things I like."

"Looking?" said Miranda. Her mouth was suddenly dry. She tried to shift her gaze to the shimmery skin of the mackerel on the counter beside Cate, but Cate's gaze trapped her.

"Well, we just established that you can't go by appearances alone," said Cate. "You have to get past the illusion. Think of what PJ's doing."

"What do you mean?" said Miranda, thrown by this sudden scrap of shop-talk. She could feel Cate's breath. It was making her hot and cold.

Cate released her: Cate released her by looking away from her. "He's trying to make people see what isn't real. He's already doing it. And you - you should know about things not being what they seem."

"What do you mean?" Miranda repeated. "Are you saying I'm -"

"Dernhelm, silly," said Cate. Miranda watched the way Cate's eyes slitted when she giggled, the way the tiny lines at the corner of the lid fanned together like fins. Cate took a knife from the block on the windowsill, and spread the blue-silver mackerel out on the pale marble chopping block. "You get to dress up as a guy, and everyone thinks you're a heroic young man. But you’re not. You’re a woman."

"Heroic young idiot, you mean." The scales on Miranda's skin, shiny as armour, were beginning to make her itch. "Are you trying to say I look butch?"

"You look more macho than Orli does."

"That fish looks more macho than Orli. Well, than Orli as Legolas."

She's got a dirty laugh, thought Cate. She lifted another translucent slice away from the bone. "Do you think he's really got a thing going with Viggo?"

Miranda shrugged, and dismembered another prawn. "Could be. Hot human-Elf action!"

"Aragorn and Legolas, you mean?" said Cate, grinning. "Nothing wrong with that. After all, Tolkien was all about inter-species amity. We should all do our best to promote it." Suck on that, Human Child.

Miranda remembered the dailies of Galadriel, so inhumanly beautiful, and her mouth went dry. She felt the honeyed trap ooze closed around her. She stared fiercely at the small, brittle corpse between her thumb and index finger. "But surely an Elf wouldn't sully himself - or herself - by touching a smelly human?"

"I'm sure it would depend on what the smelly human smelt of," said Cate softly. Her voice was soft, it turned out, because she was much closer. Miranda discovered this when Cate sniffed at Miranda's throat, several little staccato inhalations, shockingly close. "Hmm."

"'Hmm'?" said Miranda, wanting to giggle, or back away, or get closer. Wanting to move.

"Well, m'dear, right now I have to tell you that you smell of fish."

"Huh!" said Miranda. "If I smell of fish, it's your fault."

"Sorry,” said Cate, not looking sorry at all. “I'll let you have a shower. In a while." When she smiled, Miranda could see the tip of her tongue poking through her white, white teeth.

"Why not now?" Miranda whispered.

"We need to finish the sushi," Cate whispered back. "Before noon." Her mouth was very close to Miranda's. Her terrifying, irresistible tongue was very close indeed.

Miranda glanced at the clock. Half past nine. She reached up and deposited a cluster of prawn eggs on the pink tongue tip. Her widening grin faltered when Cate's long pale fingers wrapped themselves bonelessly around her wrist. Cate's tongue came out and tasted the dark, pink, salty roe on Miranda's fingers.

Miranda squirmed, Miranda stared: Miranda's mouth opened but no tongue came out, and no words came out either. She looked sunburnt.

Cate wasn't blushing. She looked more wicked than ever. "If you can't stand the heat --"

Miranda's tongue burst out of hiding and lapped at Cate's mouth, all hot and wet and messily human. Miranda's sticky, sea-scented hands moved over Cate's white shoulders, along the blue lines of her throat, around the silvery shoulder-straps of her top.

"I -- I wanted to see what it tasted like for you," said Miranda after a while. She was breathing more quickly.

Cate said nothing. She lifted Miranda's fingers to her mouth again, and the tip of her tongue tickled the webbing between Miranda's fingers. She sucked more small, dark eggs from Miranda's cuticles. She bit Miranda's thumb, and that was because Miranda's other hand was slithering slowly up Cate's pale belly, between warm sweaty skin and silky fabric.

Miranda's hand moved further up, tracing contours. Miranda's eyes - more intensely green than usual - stared into Cate's. Her thumb moved familiarly upon a hardening nipple: Cate inhaled sharply. Her free hand sought revenge, or fair exchange.

"Don't --" said Cate, breath hitching around Miranda's fingers: and Miranda lifted her mouth from the taste of Cate's collarbone to say, "I'm not -- I won't leave a mark." And bent her head and moved her hand.

The kitchen was hot. Cate's hand, lubricated with sweat, pushed the strap of Miranda's dress down onto her arm. The skin underneath was evenly golden. Cate imagined aromatic veils twisting around the two of them like chiffon in water: two brands of deodorant, two kinds of perfume, two variations on human sweat, the fabric conditioner on Cate's top, Miranda's herb-scented shampoo, mackerel scales, prawn eggs, Cate-arousal, Miranda-arousal.

The two twisted together as though they were communicating through their skin, transmitting and receiving at every point of contact. Cate's mouth was on Miranda's mouth, and Miranda's fingers, wrinkle-skinned from Cate's saliva, were insinuating themselves under the low, loose waistband of Cate's jeans. Cate was flushed redder than Miranda, but not with embarrassment. Her hand hitched at the ribboned hem of Miranda's green dress. She pressed her fingers into Miranda's smooth sweat-damp thigh, hard enough to leave marks, just to feel the flesh yield to her touch.

"You're not a bloke," she whispered against Miranda's neck.

Miranda pushed her thumb further down. Her fingers curled in soft, springy hair. If she'd been thinking about dignity, the undignified noise Cate made would have amused her. "Glad you can tell," she said. "That I'm --"

Cate's hand moved further up, sliding under the wet, lacy edge of Miranda's knickers. Her mouth covered Miranda's again, but she didn't have attention to spare for a kiss. She was concentrating on the one-sidedness of this sensation. Before, it had always been twofold: enclosed fingers and enclosing cunt. (Before, she had never even needed to think the word 'cunt'). Her fingers were enclosed, all right, hotly gripped and drowningly wet: but she was empty. She felt anaesthetised. She felt all-powerful.

Miranda, still distracted by the sheer difficult slipperiness, flexed her fingers. Cate's head went back and her eyes went wide. They were both making animal-noises by now, moaning into each other's wet, wet mouths. Cate had stopped caring if that was her hand or not. Miranda was breathless with the unexpectedness of each movement. Neither of them was thinking in words any more.

The kitchen was so hot that it melted around the two of them.

When Miranda began to recognise simple shapes again, the kitchen had reformed itself. Cate was leaning against Miranda, one hand braced on the counter behind her. There were prawn-legs in her hair. Miranda's knees ached, and her left hand - now quite free of roe, at least - was cramping. She reclaimed it.

They looked at one another, not quite smiling. Cate's mouth twitched. She stuck her fingers in her mouth, making a show of sucking them clean.

Miranda giggled. "Do I taste of prawns? Or am I human?"

"Mmm. No. You taste," said Cate, "of mermaid."

-end-

AUTHOR NOTES: To see if I could. The title is from 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock' by T S Eliot. "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me." Miranda Otto sings in True Love & Chaos. Thanks to my charming betas,

eyebrowofdoom (also my dialect coach) and

lazulus.

FIC: Mermaids, Singing (MO/CB, R, 1/1)

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