A/N: Much love and thanks for all the wonderful reviews to the last chapter - I send you hugs and flower pots full of the weirdly grown plants I grow. I do feel a lot better these days - thank you for your concern and sympathy - but the stress hasn't let up and I kind of, sort of fell into this project and so I'm doing my thesis this semester instead of next after all and it's all super stressful because I have to do half the work until mid July and then do exams and then write it all down and I'm... just exhausted thinking about it.
On a fun note - I did the dancing in the rain thing yesterday when in the middle of all that sunshine it started raining but the sun kept shining? Idk it was awesome!
So I might churn out something until then but no promises, but I think you'll all be deeply satisfied with this one and it kinda already works as a final chapter - BUT THERES ONE MORE AND AN EPILOGUE, okay? Okay.
Soundtrack: The Storm - The Airborne Toxic Event (LISTEN!) and Spirits - The Strumbellas
Disclaimer: Darcy is a bit of a badass in this one
Chapter 34: The Storm
They arrived too early and while the lecture theatre LT3022 gradually filled with excitedly chattering students, flittering around in the relaxed, post-exam atmosphere like a scattered cloud of flies, it dawned on Lizzie how foreign this life had become to her.
It wasn't much. Just as if one had taken two steps to the side and one forward and everything looked different and strangely contorted from this perspective and she blinked while Charlotte, Ed and Maddie told her all about the past few weeks – exams and essays and Priscilla Andrews absolutely atrocious new hairstyle – as if she had to recalibrate to understand it all. Pemberley with its light and safety paled, turned illusive when this place became reality again and Lizzie had to pinch herself repeatedly to remind herself that it had all been real.
She hadn't heard from him at all.
In the past few weeks since she'd woken up from coma, Lydia had made steady progress. Her fractures seemed to heal well and the doctors had started to make plans for her impending physiotherapy, but for now the prescribed pain killers kept her calm and without withdrawal symptoms – the difficult part would come when she had to discontinue them later on, but nobody thought that far ahead at the moment – everyone was just happy that Mrs Bennet had stopped praying.
Her sister was conscious and spoke, Lizzie had just no idea what to tell her.
"She just wanted to be like you", Kitty had – with unexpected seriousness – remarked after she'd arrived in London together with Mary a few days after Lydia had drifted back to consciousness. She still popped her chewing gum, a nerve-wracking sound that had Lizzie wince. "You're her role model and whatnot."
"Are you all completely off the rocker?" Lizzie had snarled. "Why the bloody hell does she think that shooting white powder up her mucosae is a good way of imitating a damn role model? Not to mention how the fuck I'm supposed to be a role model?"
"Ask Lydia," Kitty had said shrugging and Mary had nodded eagerly and said something nice and nondescript about the stupidity of today's youth. Lizzie would have liked to smash both their heads into the next wall just to have something to do.
Lydia was astonishingly quiet whenever Lizzie was in the room and they'd started watching bad soap operas and Reality TV and not say a thing while some blonde airhead pined away on-screen.
"I have a bit of a soft spot for Tequila," Lizzie suddenly remarked one day while the drama about a vanished paternity test played out in front of them. "The antics with the salt and the limes make it fun enough, I suppose. Sometimes Vodka. Beer gives me a hangover, but if you mix the hard stuff and eat some crisps, you'll be fine." With her index finger she drew lines into the crisp white cotton fabric of the hospital blanket. "I never drink alone, because I'm afraid I won't stop again and there are weeks where my stomach churns at even the slightest mention of alcohol." Carefully she took her sister's fingers – rough, sore, almost see-through, small things – in her own hand and felt the hard plastic of the intravenous access on the back of Lydia's hand. "Cigarettes I can hardly stand though I love the smell. They remind me too much of Craig and…," she laughed, "Christmas. Weed is alright and Mus loves his cigars." She brushed it off. "I tried Craig's pills a few times, but that's not really for me – too uncontrollable, too unpredictable. Not to mention that you never know what exactly they put into that stuff." Lizzie sighed and turned to her sister, who was watching her out of strangely vacant and eerily pale eyes. "The point, Lyds, is that I don't have a bloody clue as to why you could think that all that bullshit sounded like jolly good idea and I… I'm sorry if I gave you the impression it was and I-"
"You're something like a legend in Meryton," Lydia said after a while, her voice hoarse and she pressed her dry, chapped lips together. "The elder ones are still angry and whatnot, but the young people… They think you're so bloody cool – wild, wild Lizzie Bennet – and you – Lizzie Bennet – you're my sister and I… I just wanted you to like me, wanted you to think I'm cool, cool enough for London and for you take me with you and-" She closed her eyes. "But you always ran away and even in London you wanted nothing to do with me – you just moved out of the sodding apartment without even saying anything!" She yelled the final part and Lizzie could only watch her in dawning horror. "And then Wickham came and he knew you and he was so cool and I thought, I thought that if I were just loud enough, cool enough, you'd notice me, but you… you never saw me!"
Lydia's outburst reminded her of Charlotte's so long ago. In a way. But this time it wasn't anger clawing at her insides, not incomprehension at the sight of someone else's perspective, no aversion to have one's own flaws presented on a silver platter, Lizzie was just –
Yes, she was sad.
"I couldn't," she said after a while. "I'm not sure how much you know, Lyds, about what happened back then." She gulped. "But you reminded me too much – Sod that – even Jane reminds me too much of it and I told myself it wasn't my responsibility, that I couldn't possibly have anything more to give…"
Lydia gulped. "Jane just said we shouldn't listen to people's gossip. That we shouldn't listen to Mum. But you haven't seen her, Lizzie. Mum – she cried so much, but I don't think she ever understood-"
"I don't think she ever will," Lizzie replied, humming a bit.
"But then… what did happen?"
Lizzie looked at her, took Lydia's index finger and ran its tip over the lines marking her own hand. "He broke my fingers," she then said quietly. "My wrist once. A black eye in January…The rest I can barely remember." Her sister just watched her out of huge eyes, the vacant expression gone for the moment. "I'd already broken up with him when I found out I was pregnant." Lizzie smiled with acerbic sweetness. "Seventeen – Lyds – I was seventeen when I was pregnant and seventeen when I lost it. It was a miscarriage, but everyone thought – even Matthew thought it was on purpose. Even Mum thought that, you know?"
Lydia opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out of it.
"You're my sister," Lizzie then said. "That's what you are, despite it all – blood and genes and the god damn trees on the meadow behind our house – and I won't – don't ask me to fill that role to perfection. Don't think that I'm the answer and that I could save you, then really, I barely manage to save myself and that only by a hair's breadth." She squeezed Lydia's hand. "But you're my sister, just as much as Jane, Kitty, Mary and Anne and I promise I'll do better, okay? But for now… you know, I think maybe you should try being yourself for a little while and not somebody else."
"Will you… will you be there?"
"Of course."
Her parents and younger sisters had moved in with Jane and Charlie who were living in the old penthouse again – they kept separate bedrooms however for the time being and Lizzie who hadn't wanted to move into her old flat and couldn't keep living in one of the rooms offered by Rosings, moved – given the danger of being overcrowded by a plethora of Bennets in said penthouse and Anne's and Wentworth's gooey honeymoon eyes – in with the Grovelands in their family home in Notting Hill.
It was like a small piece of Pemberley in the middle of this giant city. However, it was a bit loud and spiked with accidental explosions, but Lizzie loved it.
"What do you think about how the exam went?" Ed asked and leaned back in his seat, hands crossed behind his head.
"Don't know," Maddie replied delicately and shot him a glare. "Depends on how many brain cells you had left to spell out 'ambiguous'."
"Well, contrary to you I don't need glasses to see what's right in front of me, so perhaps that rather applies to you," the ginger-haired boy countered and Lizzie and Charlotte looked at each other in alarm.
"I don't need glasses!" Maddie cried out in outrage and crossed her arms over her chest.
"Your hair colour tells a different story, though," was Ed's helpful comment and he pointed with obvious disgust at the biting magenta colour Maddie had dyed her hair with instead of the previous midnight blue. "Although one could sooner diagnose you with acritochromacy than prescribe you glasses."
"I'm not bloody colour blind! I can see a church by daylight and don't you dare think you could save yourself that misery. I saw you!"
"I have no sodding idea what you think you saw, you mad shrew!"
"Hey!" both Lizzie and Charlotte yelled in unison, glaring at Ed who raised his hands in surrender.
"I saw you!" Maddie shouted angrily. "Together with that blonde bitch outside the jeweller close to St. Pauls, you slimy, disgusting piece of-"
"Maddie!" Charlotte scolded her, but was interrupted by Ed who leaned forwards, eyes feverish with excitement.
"That's why you threw my stuff out the window? Because you saw me with Christine?"
"Christine? But why is your sister in London-"
"And she's strawberry blonde, you stupid, blind bat. Perhaps I should've gotten you glasses rather than-"
"Rather than what?" Maddie's voice was shrill and in the meantime half of the occupants of the lecture theatre had turned in their seats to watch today's entertainment. Lizzie groaned and buried her head in her arms. She'd only come along to this shortly appointed post exam discussion so she wouldn't completely loose contact with university and so that she could talk with the examination office about rewriting some of the exams she'd missed. Officially, Jane and Anne had reported her sick and gotten her a leave of absence with Richard's help, but Lizzie had enough of sitting around uselessly - it let wild thoughts pop up freely.
"Ed, show her," Charlotte then demanded, just as fed up with the drama after probably having had to listen to all that hue and cry all semester without Lizzie as a buffer.
"But-" the ginger haired boy protested, but Charlotte's harsh glare had him digging around in his pockets.
"Just for the record," he remarked when he pulled the small, velvety box out of the unknown depths of his backpack and threw it at Maddie. "I planned the whole shebang. Roses, Sinatra, I even bought that stupidly expensive champagne and I would've already given it to you if you hadn't jumped on me like a wild fury and broken all my records just because I asked my sister for advice about your sodding ring size and-"
The girl with the magenta coloured hair sat there dumbfounded and open-mouthed once the small box had dropped into her fingers and without even bothering to open it she jumped up and – no one knew how the hell she'd managed to scramble over two people and one desk – fell into Ed's lap more or less gracefully where she manged to silence him with a good amount of tongue and some strategic use of teeth.
"You crazy bitch," Ed muttered when she finally let go of him, but the wide, soppy grin spreading across his face softened the insult into something more endearing.
"Arse," Maddie whispered and kissed him again while the rest of the lecture theatre's occupants cheered on, Lizzie acted like she needed to puke and Charlotte assessed the quality of the diamond that graced the delicate silver ring.
"Congratulations", someone interrupted all that excitement with a sudden slam of the door and the muffled impact of a brief case hitting the teacher's desk and Lizzie's mouth fell open. "The University will surely be delighted to know that their furniture shall be spared in the future and the City of London might also be pleased to receive many less phone calls about nightly disturbances, although I was told to inform you that the janitor has absolutely no desire to catch you two in various closets and storage rooms on the University's grounds ever again and politely suggests you two find yourselves a nice flat in some remote area."
With those words William Darcy had transfixed the whole lecture theatre and while Maddie blushingly disentangled herself from Ed, half the students looked like they'd just seen a ghost, Lizzie didn't know what to say, not to mention feel, Darcy simply arched a brow and smirked a bit mockingly.
"Shut that mouth, Weatherly and take the pen out of your nose. I'm neither dead nor been abducted by aliens and if you haven't learned how to use a thermometer by now, surely this is not the time or place to practice that particular skill."
"Uhm… Excuse me, but where is Professor Leestone?" the poor sod asked, bashfully putting his pen back into his pencil case.
"Somewhere in the Caribbean Sea, I presume." Darcy hummed with amusement and proceeded to roll his eyes at some students' horrified gasps.
"On a ship. On a cruise trip," he corrected. "For heaven's sake there are much simpler ways of getting rid of people than drowning them in the Caribbean, believe me. Not to mention that discussing an exam on ethics doesn't rank that high on my list of things I'd commit murder for. A first edition of Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' on the other hand…"
Lizzie's fellow students didn't exactly look reassured and Charlotte slowly shook her head. "Whatever that guy's high on," she muttered. "I want it." Then she looked at Lizzie and grinned.
"Cheers. So while Amanda is in the Caribbean sipping overpriced cocktails, I am here to discuss your exam with you." He raised a stack of neatly piled papers with apparent scrutiny and nodded. "As far as I can tell, very nice. Good average, clean answers, a few of you even manged to write 'objectivus' and 'subjectivus' correctly. I'm impressed."
A few students grinned delightedly, some even raised their hands for a high five, but they all lost their exuberance at Darcy's next words. "Oh well, the kingdom's glorious elite. Medicine's next Einsteins. You really did manage to read Kant and understand enough to pass a simple quiz. Really quite impressive." He clapped his hands. "But you're just a bunch of exotic plants that have never seen the world outside the four walls of your glasshouse and wilt at the merest hint of frost, because you forgot something very basic." Darcy leaned forward, a smile playing around his lips. "You forgot to think."
"But-", a group of students protested. "Impossible!" squeaked Weatherly and Charlotte, too, looked properly enraged.
"Well, well," Darcy tried to appease them. "I know, I know what they say – Oh look, a pink elephant!" he interrupted himself, pointing at the wall on the far end of the lecture theatre behind the mob's heads who all promptly turned around to see the supposed, strangely coloured animal. "But in all honesty, your answers all read like perfect copies out of 'Critique of Pure Reason' and we all do know that we no longer live in 18th century Germany – Praise the Lord! – and no one wants to read that book more than once."
Again, Darcy clapped his hands and Lizzie – eyes and throat burning – couldn't help but notice that something about him was different. He still wore slacks and a suit jacket, but he'd exchanged the dress shirt for one of the soft, grey cotton ones he seemed to possess several versions of, his hair was in disarray, his face open and she tasted something – sweet and bitter – on the tip of her tongue.
The light went off and the projector started working. "Imagine," Darcy said, inexplicably holding a bag of sweets in his hand. "I know some of you might find that to be a difficult feat, but we will try regardless. Imagine you – as a doctor - are the first one to arrive at the scene of an accident. There are two cars. There are five injured people sitting in one car and one in the other and even though you know that help is on the way, you also know they'll be too late. You can save the people in the car you go to first. So what do you do?"
A girl sitting in the first row on the right raised her hand. "Save the five people?" She made it sound like a question.
"Excellent – and why?" Darcy asked, throwing her some candy. The girl stammered a bit. "Because they are more people?"
"So it would be the sum of saved lives deciding under the assumption that every life is worth the same?" The majority of students nodded.
"Okay. Then let's assume the cars collided close to a cliff and became so wedged into each other that you would have to push the car with the one person off that cliff so that you could save the five people. Who would you save then?"
Silence greeted him.
"But that's absurd," Charlotte came forward. "For one, we couldn't possibly push a whole car aside without help and besides, there are also other factors that might influence our decision."
"Good point." Darcy threw her some candy, too. "What factors are you talking about, Miss Lucas?"
"Severity of injuries, age and state of consciousness – Goodness, even the weather can have an influence."
Darcy nodded, shot Lizzie a quick grin and then turned back to his audience. "Let's try something less 'absurd' as Miss Lucas put it." Charlotte turned scarlet. "Let's assume you have a heavily pregnant woman in the OR and there are complications. You are unable to stabilise the woman without hurting the baby and a caesarean would mean the mother's sure death. What do you do?"
He raised a hands as if to ask for someone to come forward, but no one said anything.
"What about relatives?" Millie Rosenthal asked. "The baby's father – shouldn't he decide?"
"Not enough time. Tic Toc. You only have a few minutes until it's too late." Darcy clapped his hands in rhythm with the passing seconds. "Come on, faster, faster. While you're still deciding the mother is dying and the baby asphyxiates. Come on, what do you want to do?"
Lizzie saw her fellow students descend into a right panic, saw them blinking around in confusion while Darcy counted the last minute. "…Five, Four, Three, Two, One and – Dead. That's it. Too late for both of them." He looked at them sharply. "You waited too long."
"But, Professor!" the next bunch of students were up in arms. "That's not fair. There are rules for that – every hospital-"
Darcy actually rolled his eyes at that. "Rules," he spat out with barely concealed contempt, "won't help you when you have to make a decision in the fraction of a second and they won't help you live with aftermath of these decisions. Any grey parrot can regurgitate words, but you all have a head on your shoulders and hopefully a functioning brain in it – so dare to be wise!"
Lizzie couldn't help but smile. No matter how confused she was, how contradictory this maelstrom of desire and guilt, shame and wanting was – she couldn't fight that little bubbling of happiness and it almost hurt.
Almost.
"Kant uses his categorical imperative. 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.' Hedonism says that we all strive for lust and to avoid pain in our lives. Kohlberg connects these two seemingly so contradictory approaches by establishing six stages of moral development, but at no point does he say that any of them is better or more desirable than the other. And that's the point. There's no right or wrong, no guarantee that any path offers the ultimate solution. In the end, the only person you have to answer to is yourself and philosophy is just the art of thinking. So think."
He handed out the exams after that. Red streaked sheets of paper and Lizzie – heart beating, pounding, drumming – sat there and didn't know where to look. Charlotte had given up her grinning, too nervous about not having thought enough, but Darcy just handed the girl her papers with an encouraging smile and a 'Very interesting, Miss Lucas' that had Charlotte squealing in delight and Lizzie shut her eyes even more tightly.
She looked up when a book landed right in front of her with a dull thud. Surprised insomuch that she barely registered that it was her own journal – the book she'd given him weeks ago, her mouth fell open yet again.
"Uhm…," she said, a complete and almost panicked blankness in her mind, blinked and reached for the journal. "Thanks," she said for lack of a better alternative and it was – it was not enough. "I mean… I…," she stammered, frowning. "Thank you. I'm really… really grateful." For Lydia, she added quietly in her mind. For me. For what you did. For Pemberley, this show today, for not being perfect.
He nodded, a twitch around the corners of his mouth and while Maddie and Ed questioned her strange behaviour and Charlotte giggled over her stammering, Darcy said his goodbyes to the group in the lecture hall and left Lizzie there with the journal in hand.
"What was that about?" Charlotte tittered after the former professor had disappeared through the doorway and let the chaos explode in his wake. "Thank you? You're grateful? What the fuck for?"
Lizzie still stared at the journal as if she could barely believe it and the nausea in her stomach danced, tying knots in her guts and she just didn't know, didn't know –
"He performed the surgery on Lydia," she then admitted. "Saved her life without saying anything and since then…" She shrugged, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "Radio silence."
"Until today." Charlotte pointed at the book. "And I'd say that was a pretty impressive show he put on there."
"Fuck, that's true," Ed also called out. "What was up with him today? Did he find some good pills and a willing surgeon to get that stick out of his arse?"
Lizzie glared at him so fiercely that the red boy almost flinched. "Wohow," he tried to assuage her, both hands raised in surrender. "Just a joke, no reason to step into angry-kitten-mode."
"Kitten?" Charlotte sniggered. "I don't think you'd survive it should she decide to attack."
"Nah," Maddie remarked, poking Lizzie's side in provocation. "I think that cat has lost her claws. Look how dreamily she just stares off into space. Like a love struck teenager!"
Lizzie struck after the poking fingers and snarled.
"Well, I know that my timing and execution is pretty much unbeatable when it comes to romance," Ed began and laughed at Maddie's and Charlotte's protests. "But this," he pointed at the lecture hall, at Lizzie's journal, "This is pretty good, too."
Lizzie stared at him in bewilderment. "What exactly do you mean?" she choked out. Her stomach was still doing summersaults. "He just gave me back my journal."
"Lizzie…" That was Maddie.
"Hmm?"
"Ed says I'm the blind one, but… are you really that bloody stupid or are you just acting that way?"
"I don't know what-" She blinked around in confusion.
"Lizzie, open the damn book," Charlotte urged her and Lizzie who barely knew what happened around her opened the tattered leather cover and with a sinking feeling she discovered the still taped together pages. She didn't know if Darcy had read and then taped them back together or if he hadn't even glanced at them.
It was confusing and she barely knew which alternative had her insides jump and which one had them fall. She thumbed through the pages when with a soft rustling a folded piece of paper fell out of the back of the journal.
Her hands were dripping with sweat and clammy when she reached for it, blood pounding in her ears.
"I have to go," she whispered, reaching for journal, bag and scarf in a scattered heap. "I have to go!" she pressed out, louder this time, the droning increased, but she pushed it back. Faster, she thought, I have to be faster. Lizzie knew the temptation, the sweet singsong that promised oblivion and numbness like slowly rolling, steadily crashing waves at the coast.
Ed and Maddie jumped up to free the way out of the row, but Charlotte grabbed her arm. "Mierda, Lizzie, where do you want to go?"
"Think," Lizzie replied nonsensically and crumpled the paper in her hand. "I… I need time… I have to… I have to think."
The Spanish girl nodded, her dark eyes solemn. She'd grown calmer in the past months, more mature. It was like one had to constantly take a step back in order to see her fully. "A word of advice, Lizzie? He wouldn't have gone through all that effort just to say goodbye forever, you know?"
"Who knows," Lizzie said with an involuntary laugh between teeth and lips. "He's an idiot and an alien. Not a good combination."
Charlotte rolled her eyes. "Run, Lizzie," she said. "Run."
Lizzie –
I'm sorry that I didn't get in touch sooner and in such an inconvenient way at that. Mobil phones are more practical, Whats App a lot more modern and according to Richard even smoke signs can be better understood, but perhaps – perhaps we should rather play this like a game of chess without a stop watch. With enough room to breathe and no wall in one's back.
This is not an ultimatum, no gun to your head, no conditional existences. This is just me and the fact that I have to go back to Pemberley for a little while. The research institute and Giana are there and need my attention, but this here –
This is not farewell, okay? Trust me that I won't leave again, not like that, not before you tell me to.
This here – you're the one controlling it. You decide, no walls, no compulsion to move and I won't leave, I promise. I just have to go for a bit.
You are important, Lizzie Bennet. You know the other three-word sentences.
William Darcy
When the tube came to a stop with a squeak and a wheezing sound Lizzie Bennet was one of the first ones to fall out of the train at Great Portland Street with a stream of people and she –
Lizzie ran.
It was frustrating trying to do that in a crowded underground station, more of an obstacle course than a real sprint and she almost groaned when she remembered that there was just a tiny, old lift and an emergency exit with way too many small steps that one could barely all climb alive at Great Portland Street.
Her blood pulsing, her heart pounding she stood there silent as a stone in the crowded lift, other people's body parts and smells too close for comfort and despite that she tried breathing in deeply, tried sorting out her thoughts and come up with a plan.
On the inside she was screaming.
It was the letter that dispelled the last of her insecurities, dumped the guilt in a box labelled 'Deal with later' and let her find enough resolve which in turn turned the nausea into air and good intention with enough adrenaline.
She had… She had to… run.
She'd run once before. Almost half a year ago she'd run through Belgravia and then Camden and still been too late. This time she knew that there was no too late, that she had time and space and still… And still she ran.
She almost knocked down the poor sod trying to hand her a copy of 'The Evening Standard' and she felt this boundless, prickling feeling of happiness, this first surge up of something other than dimmed emotions and she wanted to laugh. It was so simple. So straightforward.
Almost idiot-proof.
Running, Jumping, Falling. Once you jump there are two possibilities. Crashing or catching. And as absolutely, mind-numbingly terrifying closing one's eyes and simply trusting that there's someone on the other side catching you can be, it was also so unbelievably exhilarating.
Lizzie ran down the street, down to intersecting ones, then turned right. She'd only been here once before but the memory had been burned into her brain with iron and salt. The third house on the left side, a blue door and one helpful neighbour who was just leaving the house. The apartment was located on the top floor.
God, she thought. If he even still lives there.
He did. And the expression on his face when she walked right through the doorway, panting, hair a mess, eyes wild and bright and such determination etched into the curve of her mouth that he had to gulp for a second was just priceless.
She wanted to laugh, so drunken on this champagne prickling, summersault turning feeling in her veins that she could barely find words for.
Instead she cupped his face with both hands and if one had to name the expression in his eyes it would have been bewildered amazement and perhaps a pinch of fear. But that was good. Fear was – Fear was good.
And she breathed in deeply – cigarettes and citrons – and then Lizzie Bennet jumped.
"You idiot," she whispered before she was the one pushing him against a ball, pressing bodies together – skin against skin, fine hairs rising, a piece of soft cotton in the tight grip of a hand, hot, so hot –
Darcy breathed in sharply.
"Lizzie, I-" His mouth opened in that near perfect angle and Lizzie, blood pulsing slower, deeper, traced it with her lips – one, two times – laughing lightly in his mouth and enjoying the friction of skin, the lazy drag of spit over flesh, the threat of teeth and the firework of goose bumps trailing up and down her spine.
"You're an idiot," she whispered again. He'd placed his hands loosely on her hips, cautious and overwhelmed at the same time and she saw the thoughts chasing each other in his mind. "Okay? Are you with me?"
"I am-"
"An idiot." She laughed, pushing her hands under his shirt, running them over warm skin and then leaned forward to place a line of delicate kisses on his jawline. His hands tightened around her hips, one thumb stroking the small gap between jeans and top and slipping beneath it.
"With me?" Lizzie repeated, pulling the shirt over his head.
"I… I'm here." He pressed his forehead against hers, breathed her in. A hand slid up her back and she heard his breathing speed up when he noticed that she wasn't wearing anything underneath that top. The hand wandered to the front, tracing the underside of her breasts –
Then he kissed her. And it was so much, there was so much and Lizzie –
Lizzie fell.
"I'm here," he whispered with her breath in his mouth. There were too many hands that wanted, tugged and teared, teeth gliding over skin - biting, tongues tasting salt and bitter iron, a hint of cola and toothpaste and it wasn't enough. There was clothing bothering and detaining, buttons that didn't open, zip fasteners that snagged and torn seams because they wanted too much too fast and Lizzie wanted to rejoice and cry at the same time, wanted to crawl in deeper, deeper, wanted so much. "I'm not leaving."
He caught her.
"I won't let you."
Or perhaps she caught him. It was difficult to say when they both jumped at the same time.
A/N: And we're back to the prologue...