"Hey."
It's a little surprising at first, the softness of her voice. He hears the fabric beside his seat shift before it groans with a new weight. A part of him lingers on the fact that she's trying - her voice is different externally than otherwise, but he'd grown used to both. It frustrates him that, after all this time, nothing has changed: he didn't need to look to know her eyes weren't on his, didn't have to see to perceive the nervousness in her heart. For one on one conversations may have lived between them before, but since the last time they talked there was still a barrier between them.
Where the barrier lay now, he didn't know. And part of that realization scares him.
He lifts his eyes to her - and he lets a small breath out when he meets her profile. She only looks ahead, then down to her lap. And he follows, but upon studying her clasped hands for perhaps a moment too long, he drags his gaze back to her.
There's a weightiness in their silence, but it's different from before. It's not awkward. Maybe that's the only thing he can really focus on: for their snatches of moments together have been. Like a fog pressing down on his chest, but lifted now. He wills words to his mouth but none feel quite right, instead like molasses on his tongue. He settles for silence. It's more comfortable, less forced.
She probably could tell, too, for she says nothing. Once or twice he can see her muscles flex and her fingers twitch, but she sits, not quite relaxed but not uncomfortable, either. There's an ache in hisown arm, an impulse he thought he'd quelled a long time ago. Yet the phantom urge to lift it and drape it around her frame exists. He resents it a little, but it's a far cry from what else could be happening, so he tightens his grip around his knee and breathes.
"Hey."
Her eyes snap up at him. Part of him wishes he didn't but he did, and her attention is suddenly on him and he's not sure how he feels about it all. But he knows one thing - speaking was easier. Less weighty as it once was - when he had to be cautious of the extra pair of ears that often tagged along with her. Not that they were a problem before, not that he cared, not that they were a problem now; either way some burden had definitely lifted. It probably had been lifted, too, since she'd insisted on him coming with her to Rimbor. In the snatches of silence, it'd been easy to pretend that their awkwardness lingered. Because this strange stasis is a combination of confusion and anticipation, neither of which he particularly cared for. So he pretended it was still there: the tension, the attraction, because it was easier the other way.
But now, it's all too apparent that he'd been trying to convince himself otherwise.
She speaks, and the subject is so trivial she might as well have asked about the weather. There's a hint of a giggle in her speech and it doesn't take super hearing to know she's speaking too fast. Speaking too fast and too animatedly and for a short second he's back - five years ago - to when they were but stutters and glances and sighs. He responds too, with that same, strange sense of uneasy easiness.
They fall into an easy conversation, really - nothing substantial and nothing dire. But with every word, every syllable, something festers beneath his fingers. Every line is a new expression, a new emotion he memorizes once more - absorbing the crinkle in her cheek, the dimple against her lips. He's relearning her, the twinkle in her eye and the smile on her face that she never managed to rid herself of. And her voice, though matured, is flighty, not unlike a bird eager to stretch its wings.
She's sixteen again, and he's barely born.
When the words slow and the syllables trail, there's something unsettling in the comfort of silence. He realizes this, and his gaze falls to his hands wrought on his knees. She too, falls silent - and there's nothing to talk about. Nothing at all, because the apologies have come and gone and it was done, it was done, and they're no longer sixteen and nothing. And yet the pull is still there. It may always be there. Until they figured out what they are and what they are becoming it will always be there, the lingering feeling like a magnet trying so desperately to attach itself back to the surface. Struggling and struggling against the bonds they'd placed themselves.
He hesitates. It's never been hard before - even the first time he'd uttered sorry was so sheepish and strange and already full of feelings he at the time couldn't comprehend. But sorry isn't right and goodnight is too close to goodbye. The seconds stretch and he feels his brain scrolling for what to say next, what to do next, but it keeps drawing on blanks as the strange silence settles. He can feel it from her, too: hesitation, awkwardness, searching for words that just a few moments ago had come so easily.
He shifts a little, moving his weight from one side to another. She's still but her eyes flick upwards. Hesitation slows her, but before that can take over her fingers flex against her knees. "Going to bed?" She inquires, her voice suddenly low - matured, as if everything had caught up to her.
Even then, there's a lot he wants to say. Again and again words and phrases pass through his brain, so close to spilling from his lips, but he reigns it in. "Yeah," he says instead. It's kind of sheepish but also unapologetic.
She watches him once more. And with every passing second, emotion begins to flood him, at first anticipation but then suspense, something akin to both excitement and dread and emotion overwhelms him.
"See you tomorrow," she says.
See you tomorrow.
See you tomorrow isn't a goodbye, but it's a promise - and when accompanied by the hint of a smile on her lips, he can't help but to breathe. He may look twenty two but he really was sixteen, and by that - he was nothing.
But he pushes those thoughts away. He pushes them away because she's there and she's smiling and she hasn't said goodbye.
"See you tomorrow," he breathes.