Title: White Noise
Author: Lexie Jayne
Fandom: Dark Angel
Characters: Jondy, Zack
Prompt: Lovers
Word Count: 777
Rating: PG
Summary: They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.
Author's Notes: A back story and continuation to my one-shot Let Go. The idea niggled at me. Each part uses a prompt as given by fanfic100 at livejournal.
I. Lovers
You, and you alone, can break my heart.
All of his brothers and sisters were glad to see him home – home was wherever they were together, after all, and no one commented on how sorry his return came at a time when transgenics were being taken out, one by one. Terminal City is held up by the sheer force of Max and her followers; desperation and self-preservation are the reason that they've lasted this long, nothing else.
Her hair is long and red now, and she still wears perfume that smells like lilies. He holds her a split second longer, and breathes in her scent of perfume, sweat and something distinctively female, akin to talcum powder and chocolate. There's something there that's new to him.
He remembers finding her in a back alley of Chicago when she was fourteen, a curvy, soft girl who would be better off at the mall or in school than picking the pockets of the struggling citizens of Chicago.
Now, she is not the dark haired child from the streets – in all truth, the last time he saw her, her hair was blonde. Red hair cut shorter than before, her skin is stretched thin over the sharp angles of her bones; her hips jut out from her body in a way that almost scares him. He grabs her by the shoulder and relishes how soft she still is. She is still her fourteen year old self, just taller, he knows now.
Her eyes are harder, but she still laughs easily, and it's still easy to fold her into a hug, to stroke her hair. It's easy to comfort her as a brother; he did it for a decade before now – he goes through the motions with practiced ease.
The Ordinaries are getting restless, and the transgenics line the hiding places to watch the military examine Terminal City. She sits in front of him, his hands resting on her shoulders, her head resting against his arm.
No matter what their family thinks or knows, he knows that it was that night he took her to an unused building up the back of Terminal City, pressed her against the wall and kissed her, loved her. The look of her flushed cheeks is a kind of beautiful he's never noticed before, and when he does, he knows the time he lost on the farm in the Midwest has turned him into someone different. He is not Zack but he's not Adam either.
He likes the way she understands, and doesn't seek him out when they're with the others. She stands by his side, and tilts her head to the side and reads his expression like a book. She unnerves him simply by knowing him.
It's Max that finds them. She's sitting on a table in his quarters, her long legs wrapped around his waist, her arms around his neck, and her head thrown back. He's enjoying every second, but Max looks on with a shocked expression, and it makes him feel better that he can still keep things from Maxie.
When the US Army begins to bomb the transgenics, they head underground, to the unused sewer systems and basements of the buildings, where they plot their survival in an America that has no money and no freedom even for the most perfect citizen.
In the late afternoons, he steals her away, back to his old quarters. His bedding remains there, untouched since the escape from the surface. She curls into his arms easily, tilting her head back for another kiss. He traces the scars on her stomach, and strokes the almost powdery skin of her inner thigh.
Sweat glistens on her body as he rolls off her, tracing her cheek bone. Her eyes are closed and she breathes heavily. She smells like him, like sweat, and like her perfume. They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.