Everything used to always be so normal between them, the standard and yet sometimes bizarre interactions of friends and lovers. When one slipped up, the other was there to cover for them; even when they pulled everything down around them, they still stood at ease.
They don't know what happened, or when it had happened, although perhaps they both can guess with reasonable accuracy. Their status, whatever it had been before, had shifted into something laced with uncertainty, and the action they had brought upon themselves had caught up with them in alarming ways.
Maybe it was the atmosphere, the sudden knoweldge of possible scrutiny and the endless questions that neither could answer. Maybe it was the realisation of everything that had happened to them that made everything seem that much more tense.
The conversation came to a halt when they walked into the same room. There was no dramatic break in the conversation as everyone turned to look at them and gauge their reactions; rather, it was the sort of stuttering halt that occurs when all further advances in conversation have been exhausted, if only because they aren't joining in.
There is an awkward pause as everyone notices that no one is uttering a word; then, an uneasy laugh and the slow transition back into general chatter. It doesn't escape their notice that all other eyes occasionally dart to them, as if the tension between them is suddenly papauble to everyone in the room.
They don't need the others to add to their tension. They can already sense their nervous habits: clammy hands, shaking but hidden in a twisted knot behind their backs; their bottom lips disappearing into their mouths as their teeth clamp around the skin; one foot, tucked along the floor in their vain attempt to hide it; and their eyes, so determinedly fixed at the point just above their right shoulder, in a desperate attempt not to lock together.
They think that this moment could have gone on forever, clenching them in a timeless grasp that made them writhe and squirm. To everyone else, their eternal struggle with unbearable emotional discomfort only lasts a few seconds, and they are being ushered to sit down and relax.
The world is a whirlwind of annecdotes and laughter around them as they sit across from each other, in basically the same position as before, only now they are sitting and so much closer. They try to smile and jump into the crazed circus around them, but they both know they are failing miserably.
Surely the others must have noticed their attitudes by now. They are being far more quiet than they usually would be, and they haven't uttered a word to each other despite the fact that they are two feet apart. Even those unaware of the current state of their relationship should have picked up on the tension and the furitive glances they cast at each other when they think the other isn't looking.
The fact is that they just want to be them, with nothing tugging and pulling at them. They wish it could be that simple, because often enough it is they who are causing themselves to topple and tumble. If only they could exist for a moment of absolute solitude, then maybe they could right themselves again.
Both of them know that they need to talk, to try and sort through the fragments of whatever it is they have and see if someday, maybe, they can piece it all together again.
Their rendezvous will take place in the middle of the night, when everyone is fast asleep, and only then under the pretense that they are looking for a glass of water in the summer heat. It's not something they need to plan or have arranged ahead of time; instead, it's just an instinctive pull telling them that is how it will be.
They know that the process of mending everything, and even the current state of awkward behaviour, will be like teasing a hang-nail: painful, yet pleasurable enough to continue, and immensely satisfying in the end. It fits well with their sort of detached, macabre humour, they think.
Suddenly they find themselves smiling, because the entire situation is so undeniably them it's ridiculous. They remember that a situation is only awkward if it's made to be so; they make a point, at that moment, not to fall prey to those little lapses in judgement that come around so often to them.
They join the conversation with gusto, laughing and conversing in the same whirlwind speed as everyone else. If everyone else notices their abrupt entrance into the loop of discussion, they don't mention it. Their moments of silence, so long and tedious an uncomfortable, seemed to stretch on and on into forever. To everyone else, their eternal struggle with unbearable emotional discomfort only lasts a few seconds, before they find themselves engaged once more.
They know that they will talk later, and that there's no need to waste the present.
They still have plenty of time to be them, for that is who they are. Not him, not her.
Them.