A/N - I know I need to update Dangerous Love, and I promise I'm on the case, but I needed to write this.
Kind of not sure exactly what it is. Hope you enjoy anyway x
Paint it Black
She feels her body scream as she leaves that bar. Pulling away from Jay when he was so overwhelming close like that - warm and safe and the only light in this invading blackness - took every last ounce of her strength and now all she's left with is just enough cognitive ability to understand that she needs to make it to the car. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess.
She wanted the drink. Wants the drink. She doesn't want to stay though - not inside of Molly's with all it's damn cheer and optimism. She's done with optimism for a while, she thinks.
The car ends up in drive either by way of her hand or by magic - she doesn't care which. Indiscriminate shapes begin to blur past the windows, falling into stooped hunches until Erin's pretty sure they're suffocating her judging by the lead weight on her chest.
She gets it now - why Jay left. You can't put this kind of feeling onto someone else.
The light is on red and she slows to a stop, the stillness affording her a rare moment of clarity. Said clarity being that if she were to take a series of upcoming turns, she'd be soon down by the lakefront and able to floor it enough to take the car over the side and into the water.
She almost takes the next left because it'd be so easy, she thinks, just to leave her foot on the gas, unfasten the seatbelt so she'd hit the windscreen first - hard enough, probably, to slip into that state of semi-consciousness where accepting and embracing the inevitable is the only option. And then a horn sounds, angry and brash, and she looks up to see green, stepping on the gas only lightly so the speedometer reads a comfortable thirty-five. Dying now would be cheating. She knows she doesn't get to cheat this.
The apartment is silent when she enters it. Overwhelmingly so, like it's intent on making a point of not saying everything she knows in her head to be true. The walls are taunting her with their state of mute: invisible lips pursed tightly in a defiant act of 'we won't say it, but you know what we're thinking'.
And what they're thinking is nothing but fact: she's a killer.
Her boots hit the paintwork hard enough to leave a mark and it's the most pleasure she's felt all day. It'll be a reminder, she figures, if she ever ceases to forget this pain even a fraction. The mark will bring it back.
Time passes. How much, she doesn't know, but at some point she's pulled the blanket that usually hangs over the back of the couch around herself. There's a noise somewhere. Either way off in the distance and she's tuned into its frequency above everything else, or loud and close - rising above the silence and the fog she's wading through so that it reaches her ears.
"Erin?" It's the latter, she can confirm. It's the latter but she doesn't want to acknowledge it because delivering that bottle to Jay consumed everything she had and she's not entirely certain she can make it to the door. She doesn't even want to try, anyway.
Vaguely, it registers somewhere in her brain that the door is opening, the set of keys he still has having been either retrieved from Will's or already present on him. The last thing Erin wants to do is try and work out which she'd prefer.
There's a rustling in the space between the door of the apartment and the living room - not a discrete enough area to be deemed a hallway, but not part of the apartment's centre either. He's removing his boots and lining them up next to hers which is a fact she wishes she didn't know, but if there's one thing that will always remain constant between them, it's his sense of order even when everything else is messy and blurred.
He sets something on the counter but Erin doesn't look up to discern exactly what has made the clank against the granite. Acknowledging him would be giving in, she figures.
The couch dips as he sinks into its cushions but she makes no effort to shift enough that he can sit comfortably. At this point, she thinks her limbs might have forgotten how to move.
"It wasn't your fault," he says.
They both know that's not true. She doesn't bother to respond.
"Sometimes it helps to talk about it."
"Like you did?" Her voice is bitter and laced with something close to venom but she can't help it.
He sighs. "Not talking about it didn't get me very far."
"Well you seem okay to me."
Jay doesn't say anything to that but she can sense the tightening of his jaw; wishes she couldn't. She hates herself that the armour she's trying to put on is letting any kind of feeling through.
"You wanna talk about it?"
"Not really."
There are echoes of the last time those words were spoken, only this time she isn't pressed up against a wall, halfway to being disrobed and a whole hell of a lot closer to being devoured by him.
No. This time, she's shaking beneath a blanket as flashing images wrap around her, sounds following, cold, heavy metal weighing down her hand, the smell of something metallic….blood, so much blood… lingering in her nostrils. There's warmth radiating off of Jay but it doesn't seep through.
"One time, when I was in Kandahar, there was this kid. He had this t-shirt he always wore - some English soccer team's shirt...Chelsea, I think - even though it was winter and he should've had a coat on."
Erin wants the words to not reach her ears. She doesn't want it - this tale of woe she knows is coming in a bid to make her feel better, or just less...guilty. She doesn't deserve to. But he keeps talking. Incessant and resilient against the invisible barrier she's erected between them (or maybe they've erected it between themselves and she's only building on it now) and she's too weak to move away anyway. So his words continue to filter through as he speaks.
"I was on foot patrol in the street where he lived and he was playing with this old leather football that had so many patches it kind of wasn't even round anymore. Kid passes it to me and makes this blistering run towards where he'd set up a goal and then I hear shots from somewhere. I look and there's this fucking Afghani soldier turning on us, taking out my guys and I was...I was just….consumed, you know? by this blind rage and I shot. Didn't even really aim, just pointed my gun and kept firing until I heard this noise, like a shriek and the boy's mom comes running up the street. And that's when I saw him lying there and she's screaming and looking at me, pointing her finger and I just knew it was me that'd got him."
She shrugs and her voice is low. "You didn't mean it. I did."
"The boy you killed wasn't innocent Erin."
"Fine," she grunts. "You win in the who's the shittiest human stakes. Congratulations." She'd applaud but she doesn't have the energy. "Want to drink?"
"To forget?"
"Not to forget," she spits, suddenly clearer. "I don't want to forget."
Erin isn't sure he replies but at some point, Jay sets a glass in front of her and fills it with amber liquid that he doesn't seem to open a cupboard to find. His birthday present, she surmises, but thinks nothing else of it.
X
They drink and she doesn't forget. They drink more and everything dulls: the lights, the heaviness of her head on her shoulders, the noise the glass makes every time she deposits it back on the coffee table for him to fill. All of it, really, except the images in her head and the sounds her shots made and the smell of blood.
She's drunk. She's drunk but she's not drunk enough because she can still rationalise her slurred words and swaying vision into a definition. He's stopped pouring fast enough and so she reaches for the bottle when he seals his palm over her hand.
"I think we should stop."
Erin ignores him and tightens her hold on the bottle.
"Your head's gonna be sore in the morning and -"
"-Good." Some physical pain, she figures, to match the one in her mind. "You stop if you want."
He tries a softer approach. "Don't do this Erin." When she snatches the bottle towards her, no longer impeded by his grasp, it's clear he's failed.
She pours and drinks and pours and drinks and suddenly her eyes are burning with tears but she pushes them away, furious. Jay takes her head in each of his hands so she'll look at him, only that doesn't work either because she can always always close her eyes when he looks at her like that.
"Er." His voice is like a caress, soothing and electrifying her all at once, and she can't take it. Knows that if he continues, she'll break and she doesn't get to break.
"Don't."
"Er," he tries again, voice a whisper, and she absolutely knows with every fibre in her that he's finding it hard to swallow; looking at her like he'll fall if she does; waiting for her eyes to open so he can search them in a bid to eradicate this overwhelming crippling guilt that's gnawing away at her insides.
She can't bare it. And then her body - so devoid of energy since leaving Molly's - jumpstarts, pouncing onto him so hard and so fast that they almost topple over the couch arm. Her lips are on his - bruising, more than kissing - and biting until she can taste something metallic on her tongue and it's blood. Oh God, it's blood, and she needs stop the images from earlier firing across her closed eyelids.
She all but rips the sweater from her body, tearing at the material until it lands somewhere on the floor. Her breaths are hot - she can already feel them - and she's gasping for air, like if she's too quiet the gunshots will filter back through. Jay pulls back with a mix of surprise and concern etched into his face, carved along the corners of his eyes and into his forehead too.
"I'm not sure -"
She doesn't let him finish that sentence. Can't let him finish that sentence, and so she cuts him off with her lips so that the words die on his tongue or in his throat and she swallows the resulting mumble.
His shirt makes it to the floor, minus a couple buttons, and she whips off her own bra; frees her breasts so she can press them up against his chest roughy. Their jeans get removed too, by whose hands, neither are sure, but they're off and she's climbing on top of him, sinking down so he's enveloped in her fast enough that the squeak she emits isn't entirely one of pleasure. Erin thinks she might feel her lips curve into the slightest of grins at that.
She's rough when she rides him. No pretence of romance, because this isn't that, and when it begins to feel so deliciously good, she nips at his neck, biting and pulling at the skin there just enough to hear Jay hiss and reciprocate so the pleasure is contoured by waves of pain.
"Harder," she grits out against his neck as he slams into her from underneath. A new wave of pleasure hits and she forces it away; demands he bite her; digs her nails into his arms and back and anywhere she can find so he'll do the same.
There's this noise somewhere - much like earlier, where she can't distinguish its proximity - like a high-pitched siren or the kind of warning animals make. Jay stills beneath her then like he's heard it too, but she doesn't want him to stop. Wants him to go harder - hard enough to break something inside of her, she hopes, and yet he doesn't.
She urges him on with her hips and her nails, not with words, but his hands reach to hold her arms down by her sides, gripping too gently as he slides his palms down the length of her skin until he's at her wrists and able to sew his fingers in with hers.
"Stop, Erin," he says, breaking through that noise with wide blue eyes.
No, she thinks. Tells him as such in her head. No. Come on. Come on. But then he does something that stills her: stooping his head so he can speak so close to her lips that she can actually feel the word. "Stop."
He brings their joined hands to the side of her face, never letting her go as he strokes the space where her dimples should be with his thumb. "Stop."
Only then does she realise that the howling siren is her. And said realisation is enough to overpower what happened earlier somehow, breaking through the blackness not like a light, but like a shard of the darkest grey, just fractional enough to not be black.
"I killed him Jay," she chokes in a whisper. "I killed him and I meant it."
"I know," is all he says, pulling her flush against his chest, letting the tears coat his skin. "I know."