So. I've read a bunch of different versions of this scene, and in all of them Fabina ends up happening.
Well, being me, I decided to take the alternate route.
Review!
"…You kiss me."
"I… kiss you?"
He echoes it back numbly, barely aware of more than her lips and her eyes and Nina's disappearing smile if she ever finds out what's happening.
She steps closer to him.
"Well, if it means that much to you," Joy tells him softly. They're so close now he can smell the peppermint on her lips. "But for real this time. Knowing it's me, and not under false pretenses."
Drowning in the pools that are Joy Mercer's chocolate eyes, he nods. Nina's face disappears in the mist as she leans in closer, watching him, holding him.
Their lips meet.
She smiles against him, and it takes all the willpower he has not to smile back.
He missed this.
Kissing someone.
Being half of a whole.
Her face changes underneath him, and he's kissing Nina again, hungrily and happily and right. For the next few moments, he pretends.
Pretends because he can't do anything else.
She feels like Nina. She smells like Nina. He is enveloped in a sea of Nina Martin, and desperate he begs for more.
His hands hit a spot of alarm when they come to rest on her head, because instead of the frizzy mess of tangles he has come to expect, it's Joy's smooth soft hair that he twirls beneath his fingers and kneads into her head. No.
He stops then.
This isn't right.
This shouldn't be happening.
He breaks the kiss with the wrong girl and steps away. He feels ugly, tainted, wrong. He brushes his fingers against his lips, and can't help but think that that's one kiss more than he ever had with Nina.
"I'm sorry," He tells her, pleading with his eyes. To understand. To forgive.
To move on.
Maybe she senses she's being used, because she looks down and backs away. "I'll drop the article," She mutters, but clear enough that someone standing outside the door could hear her.
He stares at the door, a horrible suspicion forming in his mind.
He's proven right as he enters Nina's room to tell her about his success. Nina looks at him, and her eyes are a little darker and her mouth's a little harder, and the pain that he can see etched across her face is evident even through her mask of indifference.
"I'm sorry," He tells her, because he is.
She laughs, a hard, forced laugh that sends shudders down his spine. "For what? You got what you wanted."
But the smile drops when she thinks he isn't looking.
As you may have figured out by now, my stories don't have a lot of point.
Revieeew and I will loveee you foreverrr.
(Even if it's, and I quote, "Ugh foy.") (You know who you are.)