(I Would Give It All) If Only For a Moment
in the beginning
This is a story about a boy and a girl who fell in love.
This is how they found each other, but get a little lost along the way.
This is how they find north again, and how they finally come home.
It starts a little bit like this:
They meet in paradise, somewhere under the sun and stars and moon, salt mixing with lust on a hot summer evening that carries them just a little too far.
She is barely eighteen and on the edge of something great.
He is the wrong side of twenty-five and trying to save the world.
She lives like there is no tomorrow.
He has seen tomorrow and knows that it can come too fast.
She makes him forget.
He teaches her to slow down.
Maybe it starts with a smile.
She's high on adrenaline and he's been watching her from the bar. It makes her reckless. Her hips sway as she wends her way to the bar (to him), tossing her sun-bronzed hair over her shoulder as she teases and winks and waves at everyone but him.
Some kind of primal instinct wells inside him, catching in his throat and settling higher than his stomach (he thinks it might be his heart).
She ends up a foot away from him, leaning over the bar and smiling widely at the bartender. "Surprise me," she requests.
When she gets her drink, she lifts the glass toward him, looks him dead in the eye, and cheerses him with a smirk. It's a challenge and an invitation and he knows he's officially insane because he thinks he might be in love.
The bartender made her a sex on the beach, and when he tastes it on her lips, he can think of nothing better.
They don't, of course. Have sex on the beach.
The sand and waves raised her. She knows its touch on her bare skin. All she wants to feel right now is him.
It starts with a cup of coffee.
She is lying languorously on the bed, sheets tangled in her legs and covering absolutely nothing, her lip caught between her teeth. At once sexy and so naïve, she stuns him so much he can't breathe when her eyelids flutter shut as she sips the coffee.
"I'm Kono," she giggles.
Somewhere in the midst of last night's heat, their names got lost.
He grins at her. "Steve."
It starts like a fire. Up in flames suddenly and burning slow through the years.
She blows out her knee and screams at the world from his arms. He holds her tight to him, trying to keep her protected for just one second more.
But he needs to protect the world, too. He leaves her again and again, but she leaves too. They dance around each other for three years, only barely meeting here or there. It's the lightest of touches and leaves them dissatisfied. Her heart swells, but when he leaves all she can feel is unbearable emptiness, like all of her left with him.
It starts because of death.
It's a mission gone almost completely wrong. His mortality knocks at the door until all he can see is her and all of the time they never had together. He thinks of lost chances and how he never let her know it's all for her.
It's all for her.
He asks for a month off. He needs time with his girl, to hold her tight and pretend he'll never let her go.
It starts, but it's not a question.
"I love you. Marry me."
"Okay."
They are never in the same place at the same time for more than two days, but they make the most of it when they are. He draws maps of him across her back and she tattoos her love between the ink. They leave mementos of each other to carry around until the next time. They try to make that enough.
It's not.
He meets her family, but not her favorite cousin. That's not until later. Her father is wary and her mother wants grandkids, but they love him because he loves their little girl.
It starts with them blissfully happy.
It starts for once without one of them having to leave.
Her cousin decks him in the jaw. He wants to deck his partner for holding on too long.
It starts with him promising to protect her.
It starts with family. And football.
It starts with history.
It starts with burning.
It starts when it all falls apart.
It ends in betrayal.
This is where we begin.
A/N: It's been a while since I've done this, but I couldn't resist these two.