A/N: Wow. This idea kind of appeared in my head and wouldn't leave, so even though it's 2 AM, here's a story. I quite like it, actually.

What Tommy always remembered about that night was the rain. It was pouring. He couldn't hear it inside the building, what with the heavy insulation and the music playing, but water streamed down the windows, and he was glad they hadn't planned the party outdoors.

Her sixteenth birthday party. He was practically driven crazy by his own wishing it could have been her twenty-first. That she could have somehow been right for him.

But she wasn't. Instead, she was dating Shay.

Not that that had gone so well. Just as soon as Tommy had started to think that maybe Jude was right, and Shay wasn't all that bad, (Tommy had never trusted him– which wasn't jealousy, he insisted to himself, he was just looking out for his artist. For his friend) the stupid kid had gone and cheated. With Jude's arch-rival no less. Tom had wanted to break the guy's face, but he needed to find Jude. Needed to see that she was okay. He found her in an alley outside G Major. She was reeling, heartbroken.

The rain mixed with her tears that night too.

He'd given her his jacket. The dress he'd been gawking at less then an hour before was soaked through. The water ran down her face, dripping from her eyelashes, her red hair, her lips. His heart broke for her. He tried to offer her some small words of comfort, and failed. "For what it's worth, Shay's a kid, And an idiot. And he made the wrong choice."

"That's not worth much coming from you."

The retort surprised and insulted him. He'd only been trying to help. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm so sick of falling for guys that don't fall back!" Oh. That. "It hurts." Her voice broke, and he felt a pang of guilt.

"Jude I–" ...what? Love you? He'd never be able to tell her that. He shouldn't even have been telling himself.

"You all say the nicest things! 'You're so great', 'you're so nice', but none of you want to date me!" she cried in frustration. How completely untrue her words were. At that moment he wished for nothing more. "Just tell me why I'm so easy to give up, and then maybe I can fix it!" But that was exactly the problem, wasn't it? He couldn't give her up. Oh, he tried. God knows, he'd tried. Tried for months. But she kept pulling him back in.

Something broke in him, then. His carefully constructed resolve, the same conviction not to cross this line that had been slipping slowly for weeks, crumbling a little every time she smiled, snapped with a violence that left him breathless, needing to prove her wrong, needing to fix the pain in her voice, needing... needing... His voice was ragged as he said. "You are asking the wrong guy."

Needing her.

Without thinking it through, without thinking at all, he reached over, pulled her roughly to him and kissed her. He was flooded with the taste and smell and feel of her which he would never again be able to get out of his head. Finally, finally he was kissing her. After so much wishing he could. The moment seemed to stretch on forever. She was kissing him back, her hands on his neck. His thoughts came in fragments of soft lips and rain water. He thought 'oh my God.' Thought 'Jude.' Thought 'finally.' Something in him was telling him no, but everything else was screaming yes, but then one of them broke the kiss. He sighed, exhaling confusion laced with guilt and lust in equal measures. Jude pulled back, and Tommy could sense her distress, her confusion, but he tried to prolong the moment he knew was about to shatter, still holding onto her, eyes closed, memorizing the sensation of the rain and the closeness of her that he'd probably never get to feel again.

Then the door opened behind him and he came to his senses.

Even as he reeled in horror at what he'd just done, it was the first time he started to really admit to himself that he couldn't live without her.

So If you like what I did in an hour and a half, consider checking out Happy Birthday, which is a Jommy story it's taken me four years to write! (or, you know, anything else of mine)