Summary: [OCxOC; het] We are two pit players trying to survive our horrible, wonderful life together. This is a collection of short stories: small pieces detailing particular events. Which lie in the past and which in the future? That is for us to know. Rated more for safety than descriptive content. This is continually updating. It will finish when our lives do.

A/N: Just me telling it like it is. Or like I hope it won't have to be. I spent six hours looking for this quote. A band-lacking chapter again. My apologies? And the title sucks, I know. This was an instance in which one didn't come to me. The really good stuff will be in Part II. Happy NaNoWriMo, everyone~

[Vignettes of Him] The Awaited Return, Part I

In which we are reunited after the longest separation of our lives.

'Even though tonight I've got a date with my bookshelf
I'd much rather touch and hug you
And something else'

I sat on the bottom bunk bed in my dorm room, uncomfortably halfway-reclining against my pillow. Across my lap lay the six-hundred-page volume An Introduction to Neuroscientific Research, and next to it my copy of Fundamentals of Human Genetics. I sighed deeply. Tonight had been a poor night to decide to try continuing the work on my master's thesis. It was a complicated combination of neuroscientific and genetic discovery that would take me my remaining two years of undergraduate school to complete—a thing much too involved for tonight.

I slid the book off my legs and swung them over the side of the bed, planting my feet on the floor and standing up. I grabbed a coat from the small closet I shared and crossed the room to the exit. The hallway immediately outside my door already smelled of winter. As I pushed open the large, heavy door that led to the exterior of the building, I was hit with a blast of crisp northern air. I hurried across the street to the juniour parking lot, leaving my residence hall and my life's work for the past two years behind me. I blew into my hands. It was October, after all.

I located my car with ease and swiftly extracted my keys from my jeans pocket to unlock it. After I got in, I started up the heat, which always took too long to begin working, and pulled out of my parking spot. I drove off campus and made my way toward the city.

It seemed that every time I checked the rearview mirror, I was hit with a different worry, from the utterly inane to the completely ridiculous to the entirely implausible. What if his plans has changed? The e-mail he had sent me last was approaching three weeks of age; plane schedules were altered all the time, especially in this kind of weather. What if he'd lied to me? Intentionally, to keep me from meeting him at the correct time and place? No, who would feign a fantasy for so long if that were the case? Or, the worst possibility of all: What if he didn't still love me? I stopped myself at that.

In high school, I would try to convince myself that I could get along without him—that I could spend on band practice without tasting his lips or go one day without holding his hand or hearing his voice. I couldn't.

Now, it had been over seven hundred thirty days almost without any contact between us, and I was restless. I needed to see him. I needed to be with him.

My eyes flitted to my mirrors. What if he'd changed? What if he looked different? What if I looked different to him? I wouldn't have been so bothered by a fact so trivial had I not long upheld the notion of picking him out of the crowd at the airport and running up to him…

As though my thoughts had been its cue, the airport suddenly appeared in my view. I turned into the entrance and found an unoccupied space in the parking lot. As I got out and stuffed my keys into my pocket, I glanced around, half-expecting to see him standing in a secluded corner or one of the doorways. The car door slammed heavily closed at my touch.

From that moment on, everything around me seemed to make a sound: my shoes on the asphalt, the airport doors as they automatically slid open at my presence, my heavy breathing as I crossed threshold after threshold, each one bringing me closer and closer to him.

I passed a wall lined with screens. I stopped in front of it and my eyes scanned the digital displays. The city from which his flight was coming appeared. I singled it out immediately. Next to the name were the fateful words 'ON TIME'. Of course, being myself, I had shown up thirty minutes early. I continued walking, then, going as far as I could without passing through security or needing a ticket. Too anxious to sit down, I leaned tentatively against a wall and watched hundreds of people I would never see again bustle past, armed with arsenals of travel supplies and dragging even more behind them. Red suitcases, dark and bright blue, forest green with purple ties. (It occurred to me that I didn't know what colour his luggage was.)

My foot slipped on the dirty airport linoleum, sparking me back to full attention. I glanced at my arm several times before realising that I didn't have a watch.

So I settled back into my previous routine, scanning faces until one of them would become familiar. Forty minutes passed; by the end of it, I must have studied a thousand countenances of tall, brown-haired men, none of them him. Every person with sunglasses that passed by me added to my agony. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall, then shot back up seconds later, scanning the entire area for anyone who might have escaped my scrutinizing stare in my brief lapse of attention. I became terrified that I'd missed him; I could feel my heartbeat increasing drastically. After a moment of frenzied consideration, I shook my head at my own thought. Maybe he didn't even wear sunglasses anymore. Our high school days were over, had been over. I returned my gaze to the gates.

Suddenly, I recognised one of the many people in the crowd. His unmistakable stature made him stand out—he stood so tall above everyone else.

I gasped. My heart stopped. Blood froze in my veins.

'Don't worry, I'll find you when I come back. Though it would be a lot easier if you just came to my homecoming. You don't have to, just a suggestion. It would absolutely make my day if when I get off the plane I spot your face in the crowd and then the world seems to go in slow-motion, and all I can see is your face, then slowly I start walking towards you, then time catches up to my heart and I am running to you, throwing my arms around you, and telling you exactly just how much I missed you with my lips.'