You're freezing, she gasps, grabs his fingertips timidly, deliberately.
I'm fine. He meant to grunt, sound annoyed and bored. Instead he breathes the words featherlight.
They're standing outside. It's -3º, and as she watches her breath spiral upward she notices frost in his air. The tiniest step forward, and the ends of his fingers are still attached to hers in the most ludicrous and faint and vital way.
He is frozen. Not necessarily because he braved the cold with a wet head of hair.
Her eyes close with the weight of the moment. Her pale throat ripples as she swallows hard. The shame, the desperation, the sacrifice, the pain, and here she is again, goddamnit – it all flashes in marquee behind her lids. Even though it hurts to breathe, even though she wants to tell him every single detail of every single day, even though his name floats out of the darkness at random and sets her ablaze, she was stupid to come here, stupid to seek him out, stupid to offer herself up again after he made it so clear time and time again that he did not want her.
Her heel is up. She edges backward before her eyes can bat open. She nearly turns to walk away, to run away, to wipe the tears away silently so that when he follows her inside in a few minutes or hours or maybe even never she can grin fiercely at him (if he's lucky enough to get her attention), prepared to spar as maliciously and gleefully as ever.
But instead there's heat, moist air, his heady scent closer than it should be.
She blinks and there is no world, just his face absorbing the full scope of her vision.
She sees her fear staring back at her through his dark eyes, watches his Adam's apple bob with the same conflicts she cannot overcome.
The pads of his fingers are feeble as ever on hers, but suddenly his other hand anchors in her hair. His thumb strokes her cheekbone, his forehead touches hers, he closes his eyes and sighs. The pretenses rise like heat into the cold night, and she has to close her eyes too or else the relief might just pour out of her.
Blair, he breathes, and at last their lips are one.