One moment in time can change everything as they know it.
Not that they know it can.
The world doesn't work that way.
It's all about those nasty surprises that end up leaving them breathless, gasping for oxygen in an alleyway somewhere in the heart New York City.
Oxygen, air, life-force make up their new, perfect little world created in one singular moment – a single moment which innately changes absolutely everything they've ever known, even if they aren't aware of it just yet.
And the 'what ifs' and the 'could have beens' don't matter in this world, after they've left it, back to everyday life. They knew they did the right thing.
But did they?
This world... belongs simply to tonight. Yes, simply tonight in a dirty – dirty, dirty, dirty – alleyway.
'Tonight' started off in a musky old bar she liked to frequent because everybody left her alone.
One wrong touch from a dirty – dirty, dirty, dirty – biker and he received a not-so-pleasant boot to the gut. No one approached her since.
She had sat at the bar nursing a whiskey gingerly. She didn't actually want it. It was all for show.
She just wanted somewhere to go.
Somewhere.
Anywhere.
Jackie Tristan never had anywhere to go but dirty – dirty, dirty, dirty – bars and run down motels that even rats couldn't accommodate.
This bar was quickly growing on her, but soon enough she'd have to move on anyway.
Why? She didn't even remember anymore. She just did.
She had sat at the bar nursing her whiskey and, surprisingly, took notice when he came in.
He fit in but at the same time he didn't. Long red hair, tattoos covering perhaps his entire body, a scowl to rival any hardened criminal. He fit in with the bar as perfectly as Jackie did on her bike.
But as she gazed at him more she noticed that he really didn't fit in at all.
Sure, death surrounded this place.
Death surrounded Jackie regardless, but a bar always made it worse.
This guy... she shuddered.
He was death itself.
She couldn't get enough.
She threw back her drink, barely wincing as the stuff burned her throat on the way down – not like it would make any difference, her voice was screwed up enough with years of smoking and drinking and other activities her dear mama had warned her about – before making her back over to the stranger.
She didn't usually do this.
She never did this.
She would ruin her body herself but she would never let anyone else do it for her.
He ordered a drink tonelessly as she approached, an accented lilt in his voice: deep and low and smooth and damnit if she didn't already love it – she didn't know it, she swears to herself.
She sat down a seat away from him, not putting up pretences like... oh, she moved just to get a better look at the television. Of course not. She knew it. He knew it. He had to. She ordered another drink as tonelessly as he had.
"Got a name?" He murmured to her after a while. She hadn't even noticed it'd been five minutes since she sat down.
She looked up from her new whiskey – she didn't like the stuff at all, truthfully – to stare at him.
Harsh, swooping eyebrows drew her in, but she forced herself to look directing into his eyes.
"Jackie," she said quietly, coarsely. "Jackie Tristan." She took another sip of her drink, wincing this time as she did so. "What about you?"
The man in question pulled his arms up to rest on the bar counter casually. "Renji Abarai." He told her, his eyes never leaving her face. His expression never changing from the monotonous stare she felt looked far too cold for someone like him.
Jackie copied his action, a hint of a smile on her lips as she ducked her head and looked up at him in a way that she could only hope was coyly.
It would later seem incomprehensible to her – later when she would wake up in her dingy motel room with the taste of him in her mouth – that she could have ever done what she did.
Though, when she thought about it, it wasn't all that astounding.
A few stolen kisses coming from nowhere at that bar counter, a couple of heated whispers in each other's ears, a shaky walk out to the alleyway – the alleyway: their world.
She couldn't believe that she had only known him an hour as he pushed her flush up against the stone wall of the alley, his own body keeping her there, not as though she would even dream of trying to get away.
Couldn't believe it when his mouth touched hers and everything seemed to fit perfectly in the fucked up world she called home.
She couldn't believe it even when it felt as though his hands were everywhere, grasping at her as if she was his lifeline, and her doing the same with him.
Not when his mouth became flush with hers, nor when her legs were wrapped around his waist, her beloved boots digging into his lower back.
Or even when they were moving together without actually being together, the friction created between them more than anything either of them had ever felt before.
And she certainly couldn't believe that she hadn't known him her entire life when she came, screaming his name as if it were her only hope.
Whether through pure happiness or the haze of alcohol, she doesn't remember what happened next.
Somehow she ends up at her motel – every single stitch of her clothes still on her – and she can smell him in the stale sheets.
They're cold.
She's cold.
Their world created in one night in a New York alleyway is cold.
She would later think back to that night as the night her warmth was stolen from her by a man with hair as red as a sunset and tattoos as black as her boots.
But it would be a fond memory, all things considered.
A memory dragged to the surface years in the future when she would stand in front of Renji Abarai once more, clad in her Dirty Boots, feeling miniscule under his pointed gaze looking directly at her.
Because she was certain he wouldn't have forgotten that night in their world in the alleyway.
She didn't.
But in the end, it's all she can do but stare up at him from the ground, covered head to toe in wound she brought upon herself, and smile.
(Smile and say how she wished he could have saved her back then – why didn't he? – and how she wished the people who did save her weren't so...)
She smiled that same smile she gave him years ago in a dirty – dirty, dirty, dirty – bar that promised more than either of them could give.
It was all she could do to give him a better chance than she did.
Because their non-existent world was dirty now.
Dirty, dirty, dirty.
Dirtied by her Dirty Boots.
a/n: Oh? Something new? Oh my! Koi you really out-do yourself, kekeke. Ah, no. Hrm. Enjoy this. Don't take it too heavily, either. It's just meant to be dribble, really. Operating under the pretences that maybe Renji and Jackie met and had a little kind of semi one night stand thing maybe five years ago? Obviously, there was a connection. Hum.
I do hope she isn't really dead...