At first she barely moves, eyelashes trembling on her cheeks, one hand just barely brushing over the back of one of Benevenuta's, the other hovering, frozen, until she curls it into a fist and digs her nails into her own palm. It's so delicate, so sweet, that it takes her off guard. It's a goodbye kiss, and an oh well kiss and maybe a good luck kiss, and it hurts, and for some reason Irene can't catch her breath between it and the next. She makes some kind of misstep when it's over, so very finally over- perhaps she gasps too sharply, but whatever it is she forgets herself and then she's suffocating against Mélisande's mouth and it doesn't matter.

Irene's hands find her waist, giving up on one clutching her there, one travelling to her back, up her spine, long fingers spreading out on the cool, borrowed silk and feeling Benevenuta's warmth beneath it. By the second kiss, breathless as it is, she has found her feet, and decided that she will not go quietly, never.

They can be as romantic as they want to be. For now, in this suspended moment in between one escape and the next, a bar's rest before a frenzied crescendo, they can define themselves as whatever they want, not as whatever will keep them safe or whatever will prove to be advantageous. So: romance. How is this done, again? When you're not scripting it, that is, angling for something, when it's its own reward?

"Mélisande."

A fake name, muttered against the corner of her mouth, about three years out of place and spoken- why? An exclamation, a sigh, a lament, punctuation? Maybe it's just better than quiet.