The house lights cast an unearthly glow on the darkness of the backyard, refracting off the wet footprints left on the tiles and bouncing from the swirling water of the pool. There are other people there, more souls and minds and bodies than just hers and his. They are unimportant, faceless shadows and background noises, smears of color getting food, loud voices and splashes. The world narrows to this: he is leaning against the back fence, turned away from her, pushing his hair out of his face with a grimace. There is the sound of someone gasping, filtering from far away, trying to make itself known through the rushing in her ears. There is an air-light hand on her shoulder; meant to restrain her, she’s sure, but it does nothing. She is pulled in to him just as easily as she used to be. The world narrows into tunnel vision: she on one end and he on the other.
It is always night when she sees him.
He is smiling about something, and some objective part of her brain notes the differences, the changes a year brings. He is more there, the planes of his back outlined against the black material of his favorite t-shirt even in the obscurity of the fence corner. He holds himself with more self-confidence, his easy stance and careless sprawl speaking more clearly than anything else. He has grown into himself, his potentials no longer clamoring for her attention but lying still across a body stretched to accommodate them. He laughs and her heart stutters.
The feather-hand on her shoulder is back, pressing down, trying for attention if the muffled curses accompanying it are to be believed, if they even belong to the same person. She is too far gone to notice. She is too far gone to care.
He hasn't seen her yet, this is all that is stopping her from moving. Forward or back she does not know. She knows she can disappear if he does not make eye contact, if she remains a sight out of the corner of his eye, the possibility of a dream. But he turns suddenly, following the incandescent arc of a finger pointing directly out at her from the gloom around the corner-dark. He turns with a smile still stretched across his features, the silent remnant of denial, the refusal to acknowledge the truth contained in the motion of one pale hand. The smile nearly forces her to her knees, her heart breaking even as her brain informs her that her reaction is illogical. You broke him, remember? it says, but her heart is pounding like it has forgotten.
When their eyes catch, he frowns and turns back to his friends, negation written into the lines of his back, the set of his arms. She sighs a little and turns as well. She does not know what she was expecting. Her brain is yelling as well, now, continuing to drown the ambient sounds in broken static, clamoring the same things over and over, going in circles. The feather-voice belonging to the hand still on her shoulder is speaking, presumably telling her that she's being an idiot, she should go, they didn't know he would be here but they should have guessed... they were all friends and what are two friends among many… the exit is here.
It is silent again. Even the background murmur gone and it takes her a second to realize this and turn to face it.
He is there. Standing with his feet rooted as if ready for a fight. He is only a foot away. He's taller, she thinks, and her mouth opens and closes involuntarily on the words she's been meaning to say. She meets his eyes with her own, silent for the first time in months.
All of the preparations in the world aren’t enough for the moment, right now, when she meets his hazel eyes with her own. His face is closed and her heart breaks a little more with the knowledge that this, too, is her fault. She hopes some of the remorse and sadness flooding her shows on her face.
“Nothing to say, Elise?” he asks, his face giving nothing away. She shakes her head and stuffs her hands in her pockets, clenching her fingers into fists and taking a step back. He matches it, taking one forward, keeping the distance between them exactly the same.
“Seriously?” His smirk is not at all how she remembers it, sarcastic and lacking in mirth. “Then again,” he says, his eyebrows drawing together slightly. He is looming over her, when did he grow to a height where he could loom? “Then again, silence always was your MO, huh?”
She makes a sound, she thinks, some sort of negation from between clenched teeth as she shakes her head, the newly cut ends of her hair brushing her chin. It was too much to hope he wouldn't notice her, that she too had changed.
She opens her mouth, to speak, to say something, and she squeaks, taking a step back. Swallowing hard she wets her lips and looks up at him, feet braced at hip width, hands still deep in her pockets. She finds a nickel in her right pocket and grasps it as if it is a lifeline.
“Jake,” she starts, the familiar nickname heavy on her tongue. “Jacob. I'm so sorry...” If her hands weren't in her pockets she would be tempted to touch him. She slides the nickel between her third and fourth finger and settles for keeping eye contact.
He snorts and takes another step towards her. She flinches but holds her ground.
“Are you?” he whispers, his breath ghosting across the top of her head. The night is warm but he is warmer. She tips on her feet, leaning in and back; she feels hypnotized.
“Yes,” she manages, the word hidden in a muffled sob. “I'm sorry every hour of every day.” Her shoulders slump and she does not look up. “I can’t stop thinking about it. You can gloat now.”
“Like hell I will,” he growls, and she makes the mistake of looking up. He uses her movement to close the gap between them, seize her jaw between his hands, and steal her mouth. She has just enough time to gasp before he has taken all of her kisses along with the rogue tear that streaked unbidden down her face to linger on her lips.
His mouth is firm and commanding. He does not allow her to pull away, wrapping his arms around her hips and pulling her full against him, plundering her mouth with his own. She opens her lips beneath the onslaught and he presses this advantage, sliding into her with his tongue and teeth, taking and taking until she is panting for breath.
Her arms are entangled with his neck and she is pressed to the wall of the house, one leg hitched around his hips as he pants a breath and lowers his head again. This time she is ready for him but the match remains uneven. She battles for dominance as she strains against him, giving and trying to take. She is losing.
His hands are in her hair, catching at knots she didn’t know she had, pulling back so he can trace searing lips across the line of her jaw. He steals her gasp as she utters it, pressing her further until she is subsumed by him. The world drains out of her and she tightens her fingers in the back of his neck. He growls and moves impossibly closer without breaking away. His mouth is stealing her thoughts. From far away she thinks she hears a moan. She is not sure it isn’t hers.
She burns wherever she touches him. She is touching him everywhere.
The background noise has started again but she doesn't notice until he draws away to lay an open-mouthed kiss on her neck. He pulls back slowly, dragging his teeth across her jumping pulse, marking her. She shudders. Pressed against her as he is, he feels it and laughs once, a mirthless exhalation. The movement sends more tremors through her; she can feel his satisfaction.
He disentangles her leg from his body and steps back, the smirk back on his face as he watches comprehension drain back into her eyes.
“What was that?” she whispers, unconsciously putting her hand to her throat, her fingers twisting into her necklace, wincing as she brushes the growing bruise on her neck.
“That,” he says, his sneer hiding his pain, “was payback. Now I'll gloat.”
He turns and walks back to where he was standing, rejoining his friends who shake their heads and slap him on the back with teasing grins on their faces and questions hiding in the quirk of their eyebrows.
She watches him go, her breathing still rough and uneven. Her back is to the wall and she looks up, clutching herself around the middle so tightly her shirt rides up to accommodate her arms. She blinks twice, quickly, and tilts her head back further, imprisoning the unshed tears she will not let anyone see. The feather-voice is at her elbow within seconds, cool whispers falling across the flushed skin of her face. She hears it exclaim as fingers find the mark and then there is a tug on her elbow and soothing words uttered softly in her ear.
This time she lets them take her.
He wipes the back of his hand across his lips and smiles back at his friends. He feels stretched tight, raw. Reclaiming his position against the fence, he leans and nods, falling back into the conversation as if he has never left. He slides his hand into his pocket; his fingers trace the body-warmed metal of a nickel he does not own.
When he looks back at the wall there is no one there.
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