This
They are standing at the bar, close enough to feel each other's heat, but somehow miles apart. He's looking at his glass, watching the ice cubes melt. Her thousand yard stare is focussed on the wallpaper at the far end of the room. An uncharacteristic silence lies between them.
They'd been in a firefight that afternoon. She'd pulled him down behind the packing crate just before the bullets tore through the space his head had just occupied. They landed awkwardly, tangled up in each other; their faces inches apart. Blue eyes staring into moss green ones; their expressions identical – fear, relief and something else, something neither understood.
Even now, hours later, she can't (or won't) put a name to what that something else was (or is). All she knows is that her heart hasn't stopped hammering since. It's just adrenaline she tells herself, knowing she's lying, but doing her best to hold onto that thought like the life preserver it is.
And then it just isn't enough.
"I can't do this anymore" she remarks after ten minutes of 'something' filled silence.
His face falls for a moment, before he buries his sudden terror at the thought of losing her behind his 'famous author' mask.
"Do what?" He doesn't want to ask, fearing her answer, but he can't help himself when she's around. He just has to know everything.
"This" she replies, waving her glass vaguely between them.
His face falls again, the mask slipping, shattering, irrevocably lost, anticipating the worst.
"I can't pretend anymore." (The truth is she doesn't want to.)
Confusion reigns. "Pretend what, Kate?"
"Pretend what is is what has to be, that what is is all I want there to be, that this isn't what I want.
Now he's truly lost, as she seems to be questioning Buddhist beliefs he didn't know she had. He mentally totals up how much they've had to drink since they washed up at the bar a couple of hours ago, frantically trying to figure out if he's drunk, or she is, or possibly both of them.
"What's this?" Another question he didn't want to ask and he curses the tongue that doesn't seem to be connected to his brain when she's this close.
She looks at him as though he's stupid, one eyebrow quirked, forgetting for a moment their shared history of misunderstanding each other when it counts most. She opens her mouth to reply, looks at him with that something in her eyes again and pauses.
He straightens at the bar, as if a prisoner in the dock, waiting for her to pass sentence, praying for clemency.
Words have never been her first choice of weapon in the duels that are their dance. She thinks words give him too much advantage. This is a fight that she cannot let herself lose, so she opts for something more direct as an answer.
"This" she replies as she moves so her body is flush with his. Running her long fingers through his hair, she stops for a moment as a shower of splinters clatter on the bar, reminding them both of what almost was their truth today. He freezes, terrified again that she will withdraw. A flash of pain passes through her eyes and she pulls his head down until her lips touch his.
It's as if she has completed a circuit. There's light and heat and that something else that has no name (but endless power) in places neither knew they had. But for all the intensity, there is something oddly comfortable about the kiss, as if they'd been doing this forever, not just for the first time.
He pulls back. "No, that's not right."
Now it's her turn to freeze and brace for things she doesn't want to (cannot) hear.
"No, it's not this. It's us. Finally."
Fin