She'd once heard one of her college friends tell an attractive and enticing young woman "You're the third rail, baby...".
She's never fully understood that simple and surprisingly poetic metaphor until she's spent nearly a decade being casually touched by (but otherwise untouchable to) a man who ritualistically touches whatever (whomever) else he fancies. Starting, stupidly, with his own ex-wife. The one woman who's always been able to twist his mind around himself. Or he beds down with women who win their wars by putting their tits on the table for show. He flits around statuesque and Amazonian Princesses of Perjury just to fulfill some rampant urge to chase after something supposedly unattainable. Plays a sick sort of house with the Billion Dollar (Black-Books & Black-Heart) Widow. He flaunts that fucking cop in front of her over and over again, childishly demands she accepts it mere months after telling the only other man she's trusted (since losing most all precepts of trust to her ex-husband) that he wants her.
In the worst possible way?
She thinks, at times, he's her worst possible possibility.
And then she remembers what another man once said about voltage.
She watches him watch her and numbly realizes that he's likely her only legitimate possibility.
Because, someday, he'll be the only idiot rash and bold enough to wrap both hands around the third rail and hold on.
"You're the third rail, baby. You're untouchable, damn deadly – but that's where all the power's at."
Wait, that's wrong, isn't it?
That's the way her gin soaked and weed smoked pal would have said it, had actually said it. It's what he'd told her when she'd drunkenly cursed the fact that all their male friends would flirt with her endlessly, on and on, but never lift a finger in the direction of her lips, her mouth, her kissing. It's, actually, exactly what he'd told her as her stomach had acid burned and churned up too much vodka, too little food. Right before he'd touched her bottom lip with a tap and then made her laugh by hissing off the supposed electric shock and momentary imaginary singe.
He'd winked at her and laughed too, then given her a long and burnt up look while taking down a drag of sweet blued smoke.
Sophomore year she'd slept with him and just for that touch. And often. She'd crackled onward with the knowledge that what he'd said could, someday, maybe actually come true. And that had made her feel singular, powerful, hellbent.
She'd never felt untouchable with Alec curled around her.
She'd never felt like something that needed a warning sign or neon colors.
However, all the same, she'd never felt powerful or strong either.
He had, somehow and by sneaking up the sidelines of her insecurities, always managed to make her feel the worst sort of weak. Not weak in the knees or heart or even in her head. He'd made her feel weak in her resolve, her will, and her ability to reason.
"You're the third rail, darling. Untouchable. But you've all the power then, dontcha?"
That's more like it.
That's how he would say it if ever he could bring himself to admit that he treats her as the shock line of his life, the electrified weather vane to the impenetrable storms of his own making (Storm Category Classification, of course, dependent upon his current level of self guilt, self doubt, self flagellation, self hatred).
Someday. She thinks that there will be a day and minute and moment when he'll be able to say exactly that. It's coming and soon and swarming harder, nearer around them. It's building with every little spat and every dig and for some reason, right now, everything between them is embattled and crackling up. It's all energy and frisson and tension. It's just as physical as it is emotional. It's as mental as it is unconscious.
Someday it's going to crash up between them - and it's going to explode in one of two ways.
Someday they'll survive it... or they won't.
She feels powerless now.
She feels bankrupt of energy.
She feels nothing like what he would say she is if a stranger were to ask.
She feels like an electric hurricane that's gone back out to sea rather than coming ashore - everyone is prepared for landfall but they forget those preparations just by the way the wind blows.
(He treats her like his favorite storm, the deeply dangerous one he keeps at bay and just shy of hitting home.)
((She's just waiting for the fall of the storm he finally, finally, names after her.))
Surprisingly (surprising to her, at the very least), she's completely calm before it happens. She sees it happen just before it does and still, she's serene as it comes. Eerily still to the touch of his palms as he finally puts his hands to her face and kisses her with a fury that he's kept trapped up in his shoulders, in his forearms, in his hands for years.
Just the snapping run of his fingertips sliding into her hair – it feels like static and sharp but when he fits his fingers into tangles he fits his tongue between her lips and she drains into him in response.
She bends, momentarily, stalls up and holds. She grounds herself in him.
She breaks just long enough to taste what powerful finally, actually, feels like.
He makes her so deliciously strong. He fuels her, she thinks. He always and ever has.
She's calm, yes, at least until she snaps.
Because, without reasonable explanation, she slaps him so hard there's a red mark the shape of some strange landmass blooming up on his cheek.
Why be reasonable, or responsible? He certainly isn't.
God, and he is so fucking stupid sometimes. So careless and reactionary and he just doesn't think things through, does he? He doesn't consider his actions or their weight or how much they'll damage him or her or any of the people they're responsible for in this world. He touches the things with bright warning colors (the murderers, liars, the thieves - the Viceroys and the Monarchs) the things that he just should not touch. And why in the hell is this the very first time that she's been one of them? Why in the hell has he waited so long? Waited until she's prepared to throttle him and scorch and burn him up just to watch the ashes scatter and feel vindicated in something? To feel... something.
(She knows the answer already, knows the correct response, knows he's aware of it too: She's his third rail - and once he puts both hands around her he'll never survive the process of letting go.)
He lifts his head ridiculously slowly from how far it's swung to the right and... the son of a bitch laughs. He laughs like he's been broken, burned, shocked and shattered – but he's still got a fingerhold and he's laughing just to prove it. Smug son of a bitch. His eyes go witless but feral and dark in a way that doesn't just make him seem wild, it makes her feel like she's been elevated too – Storm Watch becomes Warning.
"Foster?" His laughter, his bemused resignation as he says her name, it's final and fits and curls her up closer as his hands jerk her hard up the front of his chest. "Y'just - "
"No more women." She demands it on his lips, her tongue slicking on his bottom lip the treaty she offers as he considers.
"Agreed." He nods and kisses it into her mouth and his hands close, really cinch up into the fabric of her jacket and jerk her even closer. "Bloody hell, I promise."
He won't let go... He can't let go... He'll never let go...
"No more idiot recklessness."
Because, right, he's the moron who grabs onto something that can kill him and holds.
"Give it a go." He consents to it with barely a pause, a concession filled with laughter and more loving than she expects. "Do my best."
Her fingers catch in his wrinkled shirt and she ignores how mussed he seems in trade for recognizing how utterly adorably rumpled she finds him on a daily basis, especially as his hands skim her hips and the stroke gripping up her sides. "No more roulette. Unless it's with me."
"Gillian." The way he says it - it's begging and prying, demanding, and it's broodingly (deeply) explicit.
That's it, there she is, swirling back from open water.
Landfall. Grounding. The Storm of a Decade swells in.
He agrees with a nod and the shock of his mouth taking hers again.
Lightning doesn't brighten them up and thunder doesn't crash. It's dark and quiet and so fucking eerily calm. He stills and his hands are both stupidly curled round her ribs like they've been burned onto her, immovable. She's sure she'll have the smoked silhouettes of his palms down her sides by morning. She'll beg him to leave them darkening on her thighs too because (this she knows) he's so capable of being strong some days. He's so blindly foolish in the fact that he will curl his palms on a livewire and just fucking hold on for as long as he can – to make a point, to hold, to stay, to be the last man, her last (and arguably worst) possibility.
Last man standing, a conductor and dampener at once, Storm's End.
This time when he laughs, rumbles the sound of it into her mouth, she joins him.
Oh, hell, she adores thunder and the snap of oncoming electricity over her skin.
Sweet Christ, she does love him and all his reckless touching.