a wonderful anonymous reviewer in the original SFC CH18 requested this song with a mangaquest pairing, and for some reason i was incapable of fulfilling that at the time and set this song to soulsilvershipping instead. so, literally five years later, o wonderful reviewer, here we go — for real this time. :)
song inspiration: Love Somebody, by Maroon 5
"Where do you want to go next?" Crys asks, her eyes bright and her hair flying free over her shoulders, and, very much unbidden, a solid ingot of panic collides soundly with his skull, rattling his brain until everything is upside-down. Up until now, they've had a fantastic afternoon together in the sunshine of a brand-new amusement park, and that's probably exactly why his dumb brain has decided to interrupt now.
And he knows — really, he does — that she's referring to nothing more than what rollercoaster he wants to try next, but. But his heart is hearing something different, something with so much bigger consequences.
What does come next for them? He's never gotten this far before.
Gold's certainly gone on innumerable dates, and he's pretty much got those on lock now. That's good enough to impress his dorm mates, but he knows all too well the difference between experience and wisdom. He doesn't really have too much of the latter, and he knows it. It had taken years of one-off dinners and dance partners before he finally managed to say the word boyfriend and feel excited about it. That had been with Lyra, back in high school, and when they broke up less than eight months later, he found himself right back where he started: on the far side of the field from Commitment. Maybe he was even farther back; who's to say?
Crys is...different. Definitely different. And he knows that. He can feel it in the way blood rushes to his head when he looks at her, the way his chest gets tight whenever they get into a real snit, the way his hands don't shake — his hands never shake — but do go a little numb when he's about to tell her something important. There's a depth to his...feelings about her that he's never really sensed about anyone, even Lyra.
Usually he follows the footsteps of his buddy Silver and stuffs all that personal growth in a mental box and shoves it down the stairs until it's deep down in the pit of his brain cellar. But maybe that's not such a great idea after all, because it seems like right now, all those feelings have ganged up on him and are ready to be heard this time.
Which is scary. A little bit. Or a lot.
"Gold?" Crys says, and he blinks.
"What?"
"You're doing the thing again."
"What thing?"
"The staring at me thing."
"Ah." Despite the sudden blurriness in his vision, he manages a genuine grin. "Can you blame me?" She laughs at him then and his entangled fear and wonderment leap higher. "How about we take a sec and go get some food?" She checks her watch, because of course she is the type of person to wear a watch to an amusement park.
"Yeah, that sounds good. What are you feeling?"
What is he feeling, indeed.
"Hungry," he chooses to say, and is proud of himself for not letting slip the torrent of chaos swirling about inside him. "There's a churro stand calling my name."
"Then let's go," she says cheerfully, and holds out her hand.
After a long pause, he reaches back and takes it.
"Let's."