Fumbling. If there was one word to describe this moment in its entirety, it would be fumbling.
Everything from their lips to their hands to the hair tangled between one woman's fingertips, the pair of women just couldn't seem to catch a break.
"Has anyone seen Normani?!" A voice raged outside the door. The blonde sucked on the shorter woman's bottom lip in an attempt to absorb her laughter and smile.
The black woman leaned into her with ease, wounding her arms around her neck. Things seemed so easy with Dinah like this.
...In the supply closet.
"I have to go run my lines." The brunette pulled back to say, mumbling against her lips nonetheless.
"No, you don't." The taller woman smiled, stroking her cheek. One hand on her throat had her pulling Normani back, and their lips went at it again.
"I'm serious." She breathed. "This is the scene right before yours and I've been practicing all night, I need to nail this."
"You're Normani fucking Kordei, you don't need to practice anything." DJ looked down in admiration, pulling back to catch her breath. "You walk circles around me and you know it."
"In a heartbeat?"
"Mmhmm."
"Flattery gets you nowhere."
"It gets me one more minute with you."
Normani pulled on her shirt until they were chest to chest and their bodies flush against each other. She laid a kiss on her jaw with a small smile.
"No, don't leave." Dinah whined. "Kiss me again."
Normani tipped the blonde's head down to lay another kiss on her lips. Just when she began to melt into it, the brunette separated herself with a smile.
"Don't leave for another five minutes."
The blonde's hands faltered as her body slumped back against the wooden cabinet.
"I know... We've been doing this long enough for me to remember by now."
The brunette's smile weakened. "I know. I'm just reminding you."
"I know." Dinah's expression grew distant in the slightest. Her hands fell to her sides. "I don't need it."
"Okay." The black woman nodded softly. She cleared her throat. "So I'll see you out there?"
DJ looked away at the shadow of light underneath the door. She tried to shield her annoyance but it was hard with the tensing of her jaw. "Yeah."
"Okay."
Like the most vicious of ghosts, the shorter woman disappeared from the room without so much as a trace, leaving the blonde alone. The room felt quiet and lonely without her there. But in eight months of filming, that's what you got, right? You couldn't have the movie and the girl. You had to pick one.
Normani picked the movie. And given the option, if someone would've asked her for once, Dinah would pick the girl.
Normani Kordei. The opposing leading lady in a movie that she could only dream of working alongside. She almost couldn't believe it when the casting was revealed. She saw her briefly on audition day. The two had just nearly crossed each other without a word. She couldn't help but remember how her heart felt like it was dropping into her ass, but Kordei barely even looked at her. She was too engrossed in whatever conversation was taking place with some man who was next to her, no doubt her manager.
DJ brought her hands to her lips to wipe the slight smear of gloss from them. Whatever she wore tasted like mango, and now it'd be all she could think about. It didn't feel like the greatest souvenir when you spent every waking moment wishing you could just take the woman you were in love with on a proper date in public. But no. Normani treated her like the worst disease alive and the best kept secret, and Dinah was stupid enough to go along with it.
She rolled her eyes at herself as she picked at a poster on the wall beside her. Scarface. Mooney had a love for eighties movies. Even the smallest set design no matter the location needed to have one of his posters from home. He was an eccentric director, that's for sure. But he definitely knew what he was doing in Spear so whatever.
It's gotta be five minutes now. With a roll of her eyes, Dinah latched her hand onto the doorknob and twisted until a slight draft ran through the closet. She squinted her eyes at the light and did her best to make it look like people came out of the tiny room all the time, no big deal. If anyone asked, maybe she could say she was having a vulnerable moment or needed to take a phone call. No one would bat an eye at that, right?
From a little ways down, DJ could hear Normani on set being directed on how to say her lines. Of course she looked untouched. Her black hair was smoothed back into a ponytail as she sported a white lab coat and these cerulean blue goggles. She nodded every so often at something Mooney said with a determined look on her face.
That was one of the things Dinah loved about the woman. She took her art seriously. How to portray emotion, the right tones to have - all of these details never flew over Normani Kordei's head. She had a mark and never missed it, and DJ didn't know if it was corny or sweet that she had nothing but good things to say.
She sauntered behind one of the camerawoman to watch the shot from her angle as the actress nodded and shook away her nerves. Mooney walked off making hand gestures. Then the cameras rolled, and the scene begun.
"March 13, 2007, 9:52 AM. Subject still appears to be sleeping, blood pressure is stable as well as oxygen levels." Alex scribbled in a notebook as a recorder on a desk played back a voice note from the day prior. She placed both palms on the desk in thought, her forehead creasing as she chewed on her lip. "Performing a body scan. No response to pressure along the temples... Ears... Cheekbones... Okay, moving down to the shoulders. Blood pressure and oxygen levels still look the same, heart rate as well. Down the arms... Wrist. Fingertips— wait."
The brunette paused her scribbling to listen in again. There was a gasp within the voice note. "Heart rate is accelerating. Subject's right hand during a touch along the pointer finger as well as the middle. Heart rate's gone from seventy two to seventy five. Moving along to the subject's left hand... Shoulders. Wrist. Fingertips."
She paused. On the recorder, her voice sounded dejected as she cleared her throat. "Sensation has been repeated on the opposite side but all levels remain stable. There is no acceleration."
Alex pressed the pause button on the recorder in frustration, with a sigh. She ran her hands over her face. Then swiped the desk clean in a moment of passion. A flurry of posters and blueprints wallowed to the floor in its wake.
"I don't get what I'm doing wrong. This doesn't even feel worth it anymore. Who was I kidding? Trying to stake my entire career on artificial intelligence being the future when it's just barely begun. I'm a fraud and everyone's gonna know it." She whispered to herself. "This will never work. Artificial intelligence will never be the future, it makes no sense to even try..."
"Cut!"
Normani froze in her place, looking up after a few seconds. She took the goggles off of her face and turned to Mooney. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No, not at all, darling. We just think you need a little more motivation. We need to feel your disappointment over this invention. But we also need it to feel confusing. The AI made a huge stride, it felt something, right? But it's also not advancing as fast as it could be for it to be the future. So how can we show that? What emotion can you give me that will convey that?"
"There needs to be concern."
"Uh huh."
"But also, Alex has already experienced this let down. She's just reviewing the recording. Surely by now, she's processed a bit of grief over the invention. It wouldn't make sense to come at the scene too strong. The meltdown needs to be one more of defeat, similar to how it sounded when she touched the other hand and it didn't work."
"There we go." Mooney smiled. "Now don't just tell me. Show me."
The black woman nodded firmly. Mooney cued the cameras and Dinah watched as they ran through the scene again, a total of three times. Each time, the brunette's expression hardened more than the last. And as frustrating as it must've been for her, it worked. The frustration played off as a reaction to the character's plight as opposed to the actress's annoyance. When Mooney was finally satisfied, Normani walked off of the set, lab coat draped on her arm and goggles in hand. She spared the blonde a smirk and walked right past her to go hand the outfit to costume design.
Dinah, in turn, did her best to not show how much even a simple look made her squirm on the inside. It was truly ridiculous the way the black woman made her feel things she never felt before. Or at least not since she was younger.
Now, they were grown with careers. Puppy love felt so immature. But it was the closest to describing how she felt for a woman who couldn't do much wrong in her eyes.
Dinah thought to turn around and compliment her on her scene, something to get her to look at her or to start a conversation, low stakes and in public, but Mooney had other plans.
"Dinah Jane!" He grinned. She spun on her heel to smile back. "Refresh in hair and makeup, we're gonna run through act three, scene eighty seven and then wrap up for the day, alright?"
"No problem."
"Great! We're doing a good job everyone, prep for act three, scene eighty seven. And can someone please get me an iced doppio with caramel syrup?"
"On it!" A voice yelled to which the director pointed in a random direction. "Thank you to... Whoever you are!"
Dinah Jane snorted and turned around to head towards the makeup artist patiently waiting on her. To her luck, Normani was also in the vicinity getting hers removed. She eyed herself in the vanity mirror.
"Halfway through the movie, Dee, how are we feeling?" Cheri enthused as she patted the seat in front of her.
"I feel confident! I can't believe we're only halfway, it feels like we're filming fucking Titanic."
Dinah heard a snort a little ways beside her.
"Can you imagine how much footage had to get cut out of Titanic just for it to still end up three hours long?" Normani commented.
Dinah laughed in kinship. "Yeah."
"But for what it's worth," The brunette stepped down from her seat, thanking her own artist. She rubbed Cheri's shoulder and locked eyes with Dinah in the mirror. "I think you've been doing really great."
Her subtle wink was the last the blonde seen of her that day, and god was that a blessing in disguise. The woman couldn't help but turn red whenever she was around.