Hello, it is Wednesday, and I am back with a new chapter! Today we are revisiting a bit of Justin and Eli, but it takes place just before they split up with their other significant others and reunite romantically. Because of this, there is certainly some tension! Thankfully, the influence of Katie helps make it more of a welcomed moment whether she realises it or not :3 I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own the story and the OCs mentioned!
"Up a bit, up a bit. There's a good boy!" Katie humored with a smile tugging at her lips, the person in question as the meaning behind her words perched on a stall in a brightly lit living room. More words escaped from her, and she didn't bother to stifle them. "So handsome."
Although the most spacious room of Katie's apartment had white light streaming in through the windows, it was her and Justin who were the mirrors most of all as the corners of their noses creased. Hers with suppressed amusement as a camera was held up towards and concealing a portion of her face while his was partnered with the blush of that of a fruit on summer's day.
No doubt did Justin hear the words commenting that she was speaking of him like he was a dog from the other person of the room even though they had been set free by a wind that was set free from a different pair of lips. His right eye squinted yet it was unclear whether it was the words that was the causation or indeed, his best friend's antics.
Justin's rod-like legs drew together while they cowered before spreading apart again as he tried to appear relaxed, his gesticulations speaking in response as much as the words that came next.
"Are we done yet? You must have got a decent one by now." A hand of his own pawed at the corner of that previously creased nose like the intricate woodwork of a tree and it was as if he was ridding himself of sleep. Still, his eyes in the brightly lit room of a winter afternoon showed no tiredness. "Shall we have a look at what you've captured?"
That hand of his stropped brushing past his own nose and instead pushed back a thick strand of hair that had been lingering against his cheek. Justin's figure buckled, preparing to remove himself from the stool prematurely.
Stopping him before his actions could fruition to their entirety, a single finger of Katie's appeared in front of the camera. Justin's bottom greeted the stool all over again before she even allowed words to follow her own gesture.
"Just a few more tries." She let her intention be known, no hint of bargaining or a plea in her voice. Katie was aware of how quickly her best friend went along with what she wanted but she would never dream of using that to her advantage. Her mouth might have been concealed then by the camera in her hands, but the lens twinkled plainly, expressing what was in her eyes if it had been shown to all. "So pretty."
Like the voice from the other person in the room had spoken like the whispering of the moon conversing with the tide in the middle of the night, Katie's last two words let themselves be known. Justin believed that his best friend was talking about the light pouring into her nearly empty living room, but he still couldn't help but feel his cheeks warming as if that whiteness from the sun belonged to the heat of a summer's day.
Good as gold, some might say, he shuffled further back against the stool and adjusted the position of his face as well, complying with what Katie wanted when she suggested – not ordered – certain motions for him to portray for her.
He looked off at the blank wall in the distance. He ran a hand through his tumbling locks. He smiled like it was all his Christmases and birthdays rolled all into one when she asked this of him. And then, finally, she announced that she was done in her own way by not speaking of a single thing at all, but Justin still knew that he was free to just be himself again rather than her muse.
Perhaps she knew it but perhaps she didn't, but the lines between the two of these things were really becoming blurred.
The other person in the living room on that day, Eli, stopped lounging languidly on a patch of carpet as if he were sprawled on a sun bed but the truth was, he was barred from any patch of sunlight in case his shadow embedded on the photos of Justin that Katie had just captured.
He rose to his feet from the second that his camera lowered away from Katie's face, and she searched for him, wanting to regain their roles of the half an hour before by him being the teacher and her being the student. Eli didn't hesitate to comply, and his eagerness was spoken by the girl with hair the color of a radiant orange sunflower not needing to remove the strap from around her neck, the two of them engaged in an embrace of sorts as he lifted the camera in his own hands, chest pressed against her back while he flicked through the moments that she had captured.
Justin looked down his feet hanging far away from his seat as if they were the most interesting thing in the world but like was often the case with good friends, could not refrain from feeling Katie's blush on his own cheeks as she melted into the warm albeit subtle affection of her relative.
Unlike how Justin could have felt if the roles were reverse, she did not feel suffocated by the camera strap binding them both and breathed past the hitch in her throat at her work being studied. Katie's neck managed to elongate and peer backwards, with a secret halted breath, wondering what Eli would go on to say.
Soon enough, sunshine streaked across his features and the camera lowered from his inquisitive features, resting his chin down against the top of Katie's head that was such a fleeting moment it was like a gust of wind had flipped over multiple pages of a book. But it had been recognized.
Katie nibbled her lip with hope in the seconds before an answer was stated.
"Good, I think it's good. You have to start somewhere." Eli began with kindness but like anybody who knew him came to learn, he could rarely hold back the bluntness as if this quality of his was a naughty child he couldn't quite grab the collar of. Katie didn't feel her heart sink even if she knew what was around the corner. "I don't think it quite matches the vision in your head that you know you're capable of summoning." Katie felt the camera tugging at the strap around her neck as it was back in her possession as well as Eli's two hands patting each of her shoulders. "That's not strictly on you, however."
And with that, you might have thought that Eli would tap Katie's shoulders a few more times for good luck before departing once more, continually letting her do her thing. But he didn't. He lingered. And with a smile spreading over his features as Katie bravely pondered what he had to say, he knew that while Justin had kept a steady gaze at his sock adorned feet that he had heard every word.
That became even more apparent when, just for a fleeting second, the corners of his nose scrunched a second time. Those etchings were then names in the sand that got licked away by the shore. Justin looked over at Katie as he found his voice as well as his way into the conversation, even if it was technically Eli's words that he was answering.
"In other words," he began, shuffling back on his seat all over again even though, surely, anymore inches backwards then he would tumble down onto the carpet where the other male had previously been lounging. His kneecaps formed a union as they often did while he engaged in conversation. "Your photography skills are sublimely natural but it's my face that lets the side down."
And with that, it could have been suspected that the penciled creases on the side of Justin's nose faded away to carve intricate but firm lines between his eyebrows as his own expressions reacted to the words that he went on to say.
But this wasn't the case. Justin managed to look in between both Katie and Eli, the smallest of smiles tugging at his mouth that was not too dissimilar from how he plucked at the strings of a guitar, showing off a gesture that was far more natural than the one he had portrayed in a split second before the camera had uttered a click noise.
The last smile hadn't been anything shy of handsome. But he blossomed like a flower when his good nature had been set free for many to see.
In response, the words that nothing was wrong with his face echoed in silent unison – an agreement before the white paint of the walls and the clock lurking there – even if this insistent hadn't been spoken aloud at all. Not even by Katie or Eli, even though surely, they had been pondering the same thing.
In the end, Eli found his voice and it was his turn to have a hard time acting like his own feet in his dual toned socks weren't the most interesting thing in the world, his gaze not making its mind up where it should place itself as his pupils flickered between the man on the stool and the back of the girl in front of him.
Ironically, his choice of word came out laced with nothing but the opposite of the kind of vibe he was trying to encourage within the younger male.
"Relaaaaaax." He suggested to him, promptly moving away from the fleeting second that he had been able to look at Justin while he said this, his lips going from puckering outwards to his lower lip falling into the rest of his mouth in the next second. Eli's hands clamped back onto his camera hanging around Katie's neck, lifting it up to her eyes once again so she could have another shot. "Work with Katie. The camera might be cumbersome, but it needs to be invisible to you." He believed that his advice was a shot in the dark from the way that he was met with Justin looking back down at his socks and a fishhook pulling his eyebrow. Hands slapping softly against Katie's shoulders once more, he hoped she would be more receptive of his suggestions. "Perhaps try it with the sunlight to the side of his face rather than behind. It would look good."
Eli could have nestled into the fact that he knew he could feel Justin's gaze trickling back towards him at the last sentence that he had uttered but if he had learnt anything from the past few years then it was that you had to be certain about these sorts of things.
Nevertheless, for a single heartbeat, he couldn't help but wonder if his gaze would have bedded onto him for a second or two longer if he had spoken the whole truth and uttered the word, he rather than it.
Katie, naturally, was unwise to this as much as she was her own expert in the intricacies of the subtlest messages that humans conveyed to one and other. And Eli was left being a clueless people reader when, a few moments after he had finished with what he had to say, he could feel the young woman removing the strap of the camera from around her neck and was preparing to, in his mind, square up to him.
For another heartbeat that was like missing a step, he wondered if he had gone too far. Then in an instant, these fears of his melted away as Katie's nose pouched together and broke the distance with her eyes, wanting to be even more the student to his teacher when she resigned the camera back into the true owner's hands.
"Why don't you have a go?" her Williams' gaze met one of the same quality as she said this before she turned over her shoulder, not even just knowing better than to include Justin in all of this but knowing that it was the right thing to occur between them all. "Why don't you show me how it's truly done?"
And with that, Katie might have included Justin in her gestures, and she might have gone on to take this to a whole new level, but her words were for Eli and Eli alone, so he had to catch onto them. Whether he accepted them was a different ball game. And whether Justin complied as well was a whole other matter.
The last thing that the young woman was, was pushy but there was almost no room for Justin to argue when she broke away from Eli and she approached him on his stool, taking hold of his hands and encouraging him into a stand so he could move his positioning to reflect what Eli had suggested would be best.
From any outside view, it would have been a brief touching of digits as a stool shuffled to a different position against the sunlight and that white painted wooden object became useful all over again. But to them, the split-second squeezing of hands spoke their own things.
Is this okay? You'd tell me if you didn't want this to happen, wouldn't you?
Eli was not entirely clueless to the way that digits lingered over each other for a heartbeat longer than would occur between only regular best friends. But even so, he didn't dwell on it. He had his own questions roaming through the whirly swirls of his brain even if he had accepted the strap of the camera snaking around his neck and the bulky camera held in between both of his hands.
Eventually, after Justin was comfortably seated and he couldn't help but show off another uncarved smile of his when Katie caringly tucked a loose strand of hair behind the curl of his ear, Eli set those questions into the ether.
He did so while momentarily stooping down, his kneecaps pressing against the soft fluff of the carpet, looking up at Justin as he pretended to remove a bit of foliage discarded by one of the numerous house plants.
No way could it have made it into the picture from any angle.
"This okay with you?" Eli asked Justin even if his gaze travelled through Katie first, in the manner that she was some sort of messenger God and she would need to go on to relay the message to him.
Hands on either side of the camera and his pointer itching forward towards the shutter button it didn't look as if Justin even had a choice. But he did from the way that Eli hadn't assumed photography position just yet and he needed to remind himself of this through the sound of his heartrate slowly yet noticeably drumming inside his ears that were no longer concealed by locks of hair.
The more that Eli lingered on that position against the carpet, the more that the lines between yes and no smudged on the canvas and within his heart thudding inside his ears, Justin knew that he had never wanted to utter both these words at the same time and in exact equal amounts more in his life.
Fortunately, he was able to discover one solid answer when Katie drew the distance away from him to observe from the corner of the room and Eli consoled the dull ache in his kneecaps by assuming the position that Katie had taken when she had been the one behind the lens.
It seemed as if Justin had no choice in the matter even if he did. But at the same time, he knew that even if he had said no out of bashfulness, it would soon be turned into compliance because that was the true answer of his heart rate in completely the wrong part of the body.
Without the fedora of another side of him to protect him, Justin felt very exposed when he bobbed his head, giving his answer. He would go on to feel even more that way when, unknown to him, Eli inhaled a drawn out and shaky breath that expanded his chest, before he started showing Katie exactly how it was done.
And as time passed, he showed Justin how it was done as well.
The light was perfect now, that became clear from the way that Eli didn't allow any of this notion to read upon his features even if it was his turn to have most of his face concealed by a camera. The jut of Justin's jawline was complimented exquisitely by the now more orange glow of the winter streaming in through the window to his left yet appeared to soften it in the same way that it felt to the touch of a loved one.
The shade of his eyes that couldn't seem to make their mind up which direction they swung at the best of times had a new level of certainty within them, becoming the green of the foliage that Eli had previously discarded with a swift motion out of the shot.
It was fascinating the color that purple strands became when they were hit by the light. They appeared to water down yet grow more vibrant in the same breath and for Katie, this was as exuberating to watch as the moment that she was seeing unfold between Justin and Eli.
She watched as something else went on to unfold and Eli couldn't help but comment on it. Still looking in through the view finder of the camera and snapping away, not needing to have previously directed Justin in any way at all, he found his voice, breath loosely fogging up the screen of the camera like a train window on a particular icy winter's day.
"You're frowning." Eli mumbled and as Katie's head turned, she wondered if Justin would be able to make sense of these words from the way that his mouth was mostly concealed by camera and even if this had not been the case, the statement slipped away from him and sounded in between biting down on his lower lip in concentration.
They were like words that had never meant to be set free yet had found a way anyway. A funny thing when they were so casual.
Justin at first didn't react to show that he had heard the uttering at all, and he certainly didn't let his own mouth say anything in response. But then, eventually, after a couple of seconds passed, like a student going back over their schoolwork and erasing what didn't need to be there anymore, his frown disappeared without a trace and became a thing of the past.
He did not smile like he did when Katie encouraged him to do so from behind the lens. The beam of light omitted by him when he was not being a muse and was curving his lips up naturally didn't present itself either.
However, like the cool rain on a humid summer's day pitter pattering down on the white sand of the beach, Eli's direction caused Justin's expression to soften. He still did not smile. But even the natural angles of his youthful features seemed to round at the edges a little more than usual and his legs felt steadier than before as they planted down on the ground, a few meters away from where Eli had once been laying, listening to the clicking sound of the camera put forth by that same man.
Justin could have swerved his mind away from realizing that it had been such a long time since he had been a muse and it was the man with a rich complexion and curls lingering around the temples acting as the captivator of the art. But he was naïve to the fact that if he suppressed, it was certainly going to show on his face.
It had been such a long time since they had been in that position. And again, Justin knew he couldn't think too hard of this either or one of the photos would come out with a blur surrounding his Adam's apple as it fervently bobbed in his throat or the blush of his that was like fruit on a summer's day would start to creep up like ivy on the same position on his body.
He had to stay in neutral. Which had never been easy for him when it came to Eli. But he had to try.
"You're so pretty." Katie accidentally encouraged those wide dual toned irises of his to dart to the side of his white sockets in the middle of trying to be stilted when, this time, her words couldn't help but present themselves for how they truly were.
Justin had to fight harder to keep his expression level and even if he succeeded in this time, he wasn't so successful in stifling the pinkness that crawled up his neck like a trellis.
At the best of times, Eli possessed a smile that was uncertain, and it often started in the corner of one mouth, almost assessing it, reading the room before it was able to go the whole hog. There and then, he showed off that smile and not only could it not be swallowed up behind the camera, but it started to be revealed entirely when the camera hung on for dear life onto the strap around his neck all over again.
This time, his eyes were the one to search for Katie and he found her, beckoning her back over and holding the camera back out towards her before she even accepted the offer. He had the most undeniable feeling that she would.
"Your turn. Capture what you see." Eli encouraged and no way Justin could portray the stillness of an ocean with no gusts of wind swerving it either way when Katie liked her and her relative's prior position so much that she rolled back into their dynamic, his chest resting against her back as they worked together, two admirers of art. The same art.
Eli might have offered his camera, but he couldn't help himself and he knew that it was okay so when Katie lifted it up to her eye to indeed capture exactly what she was seeing, she felt the touch of Eli cupping around her hands, a silent act of encouragement and unison and maybe even passing the torch.
Eli was a man who held on with such white knuckles that, at times, he was the one who end up with incisions bedding onto his skin from holding on far too long. But in retrospect as I look back at this story, this is one of the moments that he does learn to relinquish control just that little bit.
Besides, anything that he loved was in safe hands with Katie. He wished that he had felt that and expressed that the first time he had gotten to know the girl with the same blood pumping through his veins that kept him alive too.
And he certainly wished that he hadn't said some things.
He was thinking of this when her frame stopped bedding into his own and his arms were dully aching from elevating while the two of them held the camera together. He was thinking of this when Katie took the camera back for her own, a hunger taking over her that he had seen in a few people over his lifetime as she didn't have the guts to ask if this was okay – or rather, she had the guts to not care whether it was okay or not.
She was ravenous for seeing what exactly she had been able to capture during a moment in time and whether it served justice.
Eli stopped thinking of this when light sparkled off the dual toned eyes that they shared and saw the corner of her mouth quiver before stretching fully. He might have been haphazard at reading expressions, but he understood it then because he had seen it in himself.
Before then, he had watched it unfurl from Justin in the middle of the night when he awoke with the birth of some particular lyrics of a song and needed somebody else to see them in case they were a figment of his imagination that would be gone by morning.
"I need to get my laptop." Katie encouraged any sort of thinking to cease, camera strap snaking around her neck but not suffocating, the quivering of her mouth spreading to her fingers with excitement as she caught just the first glimpse of what she had created. She flicked her gaze over to the actual person that she had captured. "Get your phone out, these photos need uploading straight away."
And with that, it was as if Katie was the battery pack hidden inside the camera and had been put on charge. She was visibly elated with the collaboration between all three of them even if she spoke it only by sharing glances with those two boys rather than with words on the tip of the tongue. Electricity practically crackling in her wake, she headed off into another room and breezed past clutter and empty moving boxes that had all been shoved to the one corner of the living room when an impromptu photoshoot for Justin had taken place.
For a rare occasion, carelessness was a contender in Katie's personality and because it was such a once in a blue moon thing, it was accepted and not judged when she didn't even ask if she could take Eli's camera with her, already bolting into the next room!
While Eli loosely chuckled with true fondness stretching across his lips, Justin was the one feeling like he was getting a taste of his own medicine as he perched against the stool in Katie's wake, watching her bustle off and knowing that she would be sure to concoct a social media post of these pictures for his account in the next while.
He knew that it was usually he who gripped her hand and encouraged her down the winding roads of the path unknown, so it took him a heartbeat or two to catch up. But then he allowed himself to do something that could sometimes be exceedingly rare between these two boys.
Justin ran a breezing hand through his own hair and briefly glanced over at Eli before he was infected with the other male's laughter. They chuckled together. And like the refreshing wind only just managing to lick at the heat of a humid day, it dissipated in an instant and Eli could have pretended that it was because he wanted to flick through the photos himself.
Of course, he couldn't, because they had been ripped away from him along with the camera! And besides, he never would have dared do that in front of Justin or otherwise. That was far too bold. Far too intimate.
It was just about acceptable, him taking his photos when Katie was present but now that she was momentarily gone, she had taken all reasonability with her. A different kind of breeze started to creep over the boys, and it wasn't because the crack in the window let in too much of the weather that winter in Kanto was often known for.
Eli took his position back down against the carpet and waiting for the return of the third party, this time not feeling so at ease to languidly lounge against the plush of the cluttered flooring. Unbeknownst to him because he didn't have the nerve to look at him while alone with him at that point, Justin tactfully looked left, and he looked right before dismounting himself from the stool. He picked up his guitar the shade of a cherry pair of lips that he had once adored kissing that had been lingering against a baron sofa and decided to perch there, the curve of the old friend nestling comfortably against his thigh.
It was the only true puzzle piece that had ever fitted into his life.
He managed to give Eli some acknowledgement that all they had was each other's company by returning the look as well as a polite, albeit strained close mouthed smile when the deep violet haired of the two couldn't help but glance over, already knowing what was about to go down from the soft squeaking sound that moaned from the neck of the guitar from the second that Justin's hand wrapped around it.
Eli could with unease feel his cheeks from the inside matching Justin's guitar from the contact that they shared, even if his face remained the same shade as always. This time rather than socks, carpet for him became the most interesting thing in the room.
But, of course, it would go on to be harder and harder to drum this into him when Justin started to pluck at the strings of his oldest friend, the two of them proving their bond by doing exactly what the other being in question commanded, moving along together and not arguing in the slightest of ways.
Eli just had to wonder, what it would have been like if that had been the same for the two of them.
Whether this question fully tugged at his throat or not, he would never admit it to himself not then and not even in the coming weeks. He tried to listen to the tune with ease because it was truly such a beautiful offering.
But Justin played the guitar in the same way he touched the lives of others. Even the most thoughtful of gestures could be taken in completely alternative ways. And his sweetly, stunning melancholic riff could have fluttered anybody else into peaceful silence, but Eli couldn't bare it for all that much longer.
He wanted to be like everybody else and allow the music to do the talking and the rhythms to roll off him like water off a duck's back. But it was too fresh a memory of him being the instrument and Justin being the musician, those hands of his roaming over a different frame and plucking exactly the kind of response that he wanted. That he needed.
Eli uncrossed his legs from sitting against the carpet so one of them remained in position, but his sock adorned foot pressed firmly down. He rested his elbow against the round bone of his knee and after he cleared his throat loud enough to interrupt Justin being at one with the moment, he made it clear that he would rather engage in small talk than act like melodies were the same as Katie and could sedate them enough into being in the same room together.
"How's Sammy?" he questioned, not daring to be so dishonest by acting relaxed and allowing his cheek to rest against his arm in the same way that his elbow was doing to his knee. Funnily enough, he still dared to say these words. And he was forced to repeat them, too, when Justin's guitar playing came to a twanging end and he shot out a mumble that was clearly an ask for repetition even if his tongue slurred around in his mouth out of surprise. "How's Sammy?" Eli repeated, growing less confident with his choice the second time around and showing that by a stammer of barbed wire clutching at his throat. "Is… Is he enjoying Castelia City?"
Eli took his turn of feeling as though his tongue had grown far too big for his mouth and couldn't trust which direction it would turn, whirling and swirling and slurring by its own accord. He observed Justin hesitate, his fingers pausing on the other side of his strings as if he wanted nothing more than to pretend that he had gone deaf and didn't need to answer any questions from the other male.
The truth was, he probably did want that. But he managed to move past it maturely despite it all.
Rubbing that palm of his connected to the fingers that had previously been playing the six strings of his guitar, Justin went on to answer nothing but truth. Even though it still ran through him like tinnitus that he had a nerve to be asking him such a question.
"He is. He is, you know?" Came Justin's reply and unbeknownst to the older male, he wanted his mouth to form more words than that, and for him to be able to at least pretend that he was okay with small talk.
If he tried hard enough, he could kid himself that he was an artist as much as he was a muse and he could paint on a portrayal of it being perfectly fine for one of his ex-boyfriends to ask about another of his partners.
But it wasn't. It never had been. And it maybe never would be. Certainly not on the planet they were sharing.
Eli very openly winced when this was all Justin said before that sweaty hand of his that had been wiped dry twitched back towards strings all over again, longing to be at one with the melodies inside his own head and therefore able to play them for anybody listen.
Eli, however, managed to fool Justin enough that it was just a tic, and he was squinting as well as drawing his top lip into his mouth and sucking down on it before doing the same to the bottom one so it wouldn't be lonesome.
Of course, Justin knew the truth of the matter but didn't want to dwell on that either.
"Has he managed to see much of the sights or is he mainly confined to set?" Eli pressed, there and then wishing he could at least be like Justin so he could have something in his lap to keep him company.
In the end, he had to draw his own hands together in his lap that was assuming his initial positioning on the floor and that had to be enough.
Eli's cheek winced as much as his eye had previously done when he heard a similar uttering from Justin at first.
"You know…" he bought himself time as he squirmed though, it goes without saying, the sofa wasn't that uncomfortable without the decorative sofa cushions that both Katie and Lucy usually had sprawling across the ones that came with the frame. Eli would go on to add that phrase to the list of ones that he loathed. How could something so casual be so irksome? "He's not seeing as much as he would like." Justin said and Eli nodded immediately for something to do. A few seconds later, something else decided to announce. "No complaints from his end, though, I'm sure."
And with that, the younger of the two decided that he had done enough, and he had said enough and despite his actual desire to not really speak of that kind of subject at all, he had at least come out with a handful of a few broken sentences.
Eli had to be satisfied, didn't he?
Furthermore, he had to be satisfied the way that he had held back expressions for him but, of course, Eli didn't exactly live inside Justin's head in the way that he had once believed. It went completely unrecognized that he didn't allow the corners of his eyes to crease into a smile at his own words.
Looking back, he hoped that it wasn't the kind of smile that he had portrayed for Katie when he was first behind the camera lens and her being the conductor.
While it was true that a weight dragged down his heart each time he thought about how he and their children had meant to join Sammy in Castelia City while he filmed for his latest role, he tried to remind himself that it wouldn't have been what his long-term boyfriend would have wanted.
Justin loved him enough to let him go and not turn down the opportunity of a lifetime and to tell you the truth, he was more than happy to do so after all the times he had left Sammy in his wake while packing his bags to go touring across the regions with his music.
But surely, if Justin really loved him, wouldn't he have followed him to all corners of the Pokémon World in the same way that he often did for him? Could he really say that children needed stability when he hadn't really had any growing up, but he turned out relatively okay?
Had he?
Well, Justin knew better than to ponder this too hard.
He tried to use the silence as a path which allowed him to move onto where he really wanted to be by playing his music all over again. But it shouldn't be a surprise that, noises from Eli's throat got there first. He posed another question.
He really couldn't stand there not being a true third party between them, could he? He truly must loathe it from the way he resorted to small talk that he often deemed pointless and an absolute waste of time.
"How's the kids?" Eli posed. At least this time came a question that didn't carry all the weight of the world.
This was a subject that Justin, in the same manner of writing songs and lyrics and how everything flowed together in a mysteriously magical way, he could talk about for hours. A smile tugged across his lips that wasn't put on for any sort of camera. And he even stopped the voluptuous red curves of his guitar from lulling over his thigh and that structure laid flat out over his bony knees instead, only just feeling the tender touch of a single padded finger out of adoration.
His guitar was cast to the one side when it came to Darcy, Zack, and Layla.
Well, almost.
Justin couldn't stop himself from answering truthfully and within his heart, Eli was silently glad that it had occurred to him to speak of a subject that came naturally to the both of them. You see, in similar ways to how Katie was able to bridge the gap between the two of them, there never had to be any pretending when those sweet scoundrels were involved.
There was no time for bitterness. No room for anything but amicability. Children didn't deserve to suffocate in the poison of anything less than a good example.
And so, Eli heard about all the latest antics. Darcy was becoming even more interested by everything in the kitchen as time passed, so much so that when they video called their Papá in Unova, Sammy was scolded for his quick meals and his takeaways in between long and grueling hours on set.
Zack, on the other hand, could never be confined to a kitchen and spent his days clamoring to go over to Nanny Jessie and Grandpa James' house to play with Johnny Jinn, the only other kid who gave him a run for his money with regards to his unfaltering energy levels.
An absolute daydream in all hours of the day was Layla. She was barely even six months old at that point, but her nature made Justin feel certain that his father was wrong, and he hadn't brought any angels into the world, but it had actually been Justin.
He felt that way every time that he poked his head into her crib and saw her sleeping face. A smile danced across Eli's features as he imagined this.
Justin might have gone on to say all of this but after it was over, and before the other male could scoot in there with any additions of his own or ask any questions, the younger of the two had just one more thing to say.
He nonchalantly plucked at the middle string of the pack and allowed that noise to ring out. His words would have far more of an effect as time went on, even if that there and then had the power to be grating.
"You know…" Justin began again, and Eli's eyebrows shot to the curls hanging around his hairline as he heard this all over again. He reminded himself to give the benefit of the doubt. But it could quickly grow thin. "You don't have to keep thinking of things to say to me. You don't have to talk if you don't want." He made it known, the longing guitar of his slowly crawling back against his thigh like a lover who could manage nothing but closeness. Its presence made him able to conclude boldly. "There is such thing as a comfortable silence between friends and it is welcomed."
There are a great many times in Justin's life that, when he looks back, he wishes that he had said something different. And sometimes worse, he wishes that he had said anything at all. How dreadful it was to have longing plucking at the base of his neck and erecting the hairs on his neck but for those words to snuff out by a coward with exceptionally large stomping boots.
This moment was not one of them. This wasn't a moment that he longed to snatch back sentences like they were a precious secret that couldn't be revealed just yet. Wasn't a moment where words longed to, needed to form, and put out there.
Justin deemed nothing wrong with what he had chosen to say to Eli. That was why it was so shocking the response that he got in return.
Eli's neck inclined as his head tilted on the one side, looking at Justin with pondering eyes that had once lured him in so deep before shoving him in a helpless pile on the pavement. No lure was there on that day. Or if there was, Justin didn't allow himself to be reeled in.
Yet it was still a slap when lines etched through the center of his two nurtured eyebrows and lips that had a long time ago been so desirable spoke words that he never expected to hear.
That was saying something because he thought that he had once heard the whole spectrum from Eli.
"I am no stranger to the comfortable silence that presents itself between folks when they have years on their side." Eli began and as Justin's eyelashes clapped together, listening, he tried not to think about how that had never been the case between them because any sort of silence turned into their own kind of noise. Maybe he shouldn't have put this out into the atmosphere. How shuddering it was in reverse. "But Justin," the man of the same name's eyes dropped when, just for a second, two lower canines appeared as he very literally got his teeth around saying that word. "You and I are not friends. And we never will be."
It would have been less painful if, instead of those two teeth of his appearing inadvertently as his dual dialectic tongue wrapped itself around the language that they could share, they had sunk into the skin of Justin and not letting go, piercing so hard that they ended up puncturing his heart.
Although none of this had been the case, Justin felt all air escaping him like two holes had pressed into the flimsy film of his skin. He had to steady himself so as not to send his guitar crashing down towards the ground.
His expression was of the same manner. He might have tried to hide it once, but Katie had nurtured it into him, like she was a sculptor and he was a clay vase needing direction of how to be, that no good came of not being true to who you really were. And how you truly felt.
Justin's features sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Yet even if for a few minutes it was like all the salty water of the sea was clogging up his throat and the brittle specs of sand were grazing down his tonsils, he still managed to be courageous enough to find his own voice.
Or stupid. Looking back, he wonders if he was stupid.
"What is your problem, Eli…?" Justin started and he hadn't intended to do anything of the kind, but this immediately lured him in. His head tilted closer to him so if they were perched nearer to each other, they would surely feel exhalations of different degrees tickling against each other's upper lips. Justin's eyes were soldiers lucky to have escaped from the battlefield. "I thought were past the stage of you disliking me…"
This was the moment that he decided that he didn't want his guitar lounging anywhere near him and certainly not against him. He didn't want to spread his dismay and heartache to an innocent thing. Or it was because he then felt as small as the child that he had been without a love of guitars so therefore didn't need it anymore.
It was fascinating how quickly a twenty-eight-year-old man can go from his true form to embodying one that he portrayed far more than half of his age, but it happens more frequently than you might think.
Justin negotiated everything in his power to not allow his bottom lip to stand out even if the face paced flickering and the frown of his brow spoke of the utter dismay and the hurt on his heart.
He didn't think that there would be anything that Eli could say to make it right again. It was far too late for that. What was done had been done and what had been said had well and truly been said.
Still, Eli tried again. It was a blessing and a curse that a lot of the times, when he was honest, he was well and truly and unfalteringly honest.
"I never said that I disliked you." Came his initial response, straight forward and light but to Justin's fragile ears that then carried the blush of a rose like a sweet pair of lips had pressed against them, they were antagonizing him.
Gone was the soft appearance of his jaw as it attained all jaggedness to be able to continue. His eyes shot over to Eli as much as they could muster in between frowning.
"Then…" Justin hiccupped this first word out and it took all the strength of his straining heart to not burst out with the words of what the hell when Eli had so casually said words which, to him, were like a large cannon ball sending his ship sinking to the unforgiving depths of the water. "Then what do you mean…? What even is this…? What is this if we are not even friends…?"
His jawline hollowed out even more like the empty space inside an abandoned tree, betraying the rest of his being by clearly showing how taken for a ride he truly felt.
Within those empty cheekbones of his, he knew that he had escaped by the skin of his teeth with regards to being able to speak of the word we but in the not in the way that meant him and Eli together. To be certain, it had been a long time since they had been anything of the sort.
Furthermore, he had managed to say this instead of us.
Were they ever that? He might have kid himself that he wrote a song with that same title and went on to perform it each time on stage and even construct a music video with him in mind, but they had never been that, had they?
They had always been a fleeting moment. One shoved down extremely far away in the end. You can't be loved by someone who is disgusted with themselves.
Justin wasn't sure he wanted to hear any answers from Eli. He had been certain that they were a long way from where they started even if they were a long way from where they both wanted to be.
Nevertheless, he had posed questions. So eventually, answers came back around to haunt him. Or rather, a posed question in response sent him spinning around like he was on some sick merry-go-round.
"Is this friendship?" he posed, his voice far steadier than Justin had known for as long as he could remember, and it unnerved him. But as if he were hypnotised, he still listened to that low, lulling voice. "Or is this a love that failed, that crumbled, that crashed and burned and started a wildfire, and now those two people are desperately trying to give those ruins any sort of label. Friendship." Eli sneered. And he didn't. The coolness, factuality of his heavy words was almost alarming. Then, a shaking of his head from side to side gave Justin an alternative perspective. "We were never friends. I certainly never viewed you as that."
Justin had been so crushed by the information that two previous lovers were becoming friends again in the way that they had always meant to be just a fallacy. And now, seconds later and words later, the weight didn't elevate away from his heart, not exactly, but it didn't continue to tug him down.
A breeze washed over him as if he were standing on the edge of the sore. He hated this, God, he hated this. But he slowly started to nod his head. He understood. He had started to understand. For the first time in ever, words from Eli had put them towards looking at the same view rather than opposing ones.
That same, looming, undeniable view. It had been electric from the moment that their palms touched for the first time as they shook hands, introducing themselves to each other over dinner. They kid themselves that it was chance. That it was the result of a wearing winter. That the adrenaline pumping through them as they went on to converse was passion for the same subjects rather than a new, growing, albeit already untamable fire for each other.
They had never been friends? They had never been friends.
That sentence changed from a question to a statement in the slow, thudding heartbeat of two very separate souls in two very separate bodies. So, what were they doing? Why had they been trying to revert to something that had never been?
Justin groaned. Justin very openly groaned, and it was the low noise escaping from his throat that he couldn't hide and didn't bother to hide. Although from half of his concealing hand, Eli could read laughter etching across his face, even he could tell it wasn't the kind relishing in a joke.
Well, it could have been a joke. A very twisted one.
"Sometimes I wish that you still disliked me." Justin confessed, the disbelieved shield of his own hand covering one of his cheeks and his middle finger extending up just enough to glimmer his eyelid shut for half a second. One eye was looking away while the other somehow managed to flicker onto the face of Eli. "How easy would that be…?"
He very clearly imagined the disdain crippling the face of Eli as he looked into his eyes, and it wasn't all that hard to summon because he believed that he had seen it once. He pictured such disgust transpiring between them both that they wanted to walk to separate ends of the earth and away from each other. Even that would have been too close for comfort.
But of course, the only thing that fuels true disdain is love. You can claim that you loathe a thing or a person. But if you allow them to torture you, to torment your thoughts night and day, you must ponder: is it really contempt? Or is it that same feeling on the exact opposite end of the spectrum? The maniacal twin of everything that is pure and white?
"I never hated you, though, Justin…" Eli broke Justin away from his thoughts and immediately, like a grey storm cloud filling up a summer sky, this thundered through the younger male. He wanted to wretch. He wanted to shudder at how easily he spoke that word when he himself had tiptoed around it. He gurned more when Eli left the sofa beneath him and the weight on the next sofa cushion to Justin shifted. "Maybe I felt that way about how you acted at times… But never you."
Justin didn't understand how Eli could speak of this with such levelness. And in truth, it stung him how easily he could paint a picture of a word that carried such weight. To him, it was just a whisper in the wind.
He wanted nothing less than to look at him when he invited himself to sit right next to him, that head of his still inclined, like it always was when he was listening. Or worse, when he was dragging you down with him.
Justin took in a long inhale of breath like this could settle his nerves but of course it could not. In the same manner he had lied to himself that they were building a friendship, he kid himself that all it would take for the insides of his to stop bleeding out was a little bit of oxygen.
The rest of Justin wasn't so foolish even if his brain was imaginative enough to be able to run a long way with this idea.
"Well like I said," he started again thickly, wanting to shift his own weight on the sofa and move away but that would have been far too obvious. And the longer that he left that as well as the longer he left the break in between his sentence, the more he couldn't stop himself from peering over at Eli. Dammit. Why did he still like to torture himself so much? "It would be a lot easier. And we would know exactly how to proceed."
Although even on their best days they would never dream of being able to admit to being each other's mirror image, in those few seconds they certainly were when, after a couple of seconds of kidding themselves they were brave enough to look into each other's eyes, that ability fell away like a dart pinging out from the depths of a dart board at the end of a pub tournament.
You can say such things looking back and truly looking back in hindsight, neither one of them knew why they were so dramatic about not knowing how to proceed. It was like they were dealing with new information. But they were not. They might have never spoken about this kind of thing together before, but it was hardly exactly new.
Even if they tried to distract themselves with whatever it was that could shield from the gnawing claws of knowing running up and down like razors across their skin, there had always been at least a split second of every single day where they allowed themselves to succumb to the truth.
Their feelings for each other would always be greater than life itself. They just had to wait. They just had to be patient. They just had to allow time to work its magic and for the bruising of what was once in love to just settle down into love. Comfortable, easy, barely even thought about love. Like an old sweater that you forgot about at the back of your cupboard. Like discovering a playlist from your youth. Like sinking into your duvet at the end of the day.
And if love never came and friendship never presented itself because that had never formed then – well – at least they had people in their lives who bound them together with such silent strength that it made them forget all this foolishness. If only she would hurry and return! She must have gotten distracted.
"I would say things will get easier in time and it probably will be true but it's also a bit of a piss take coming from someone with nothing but time." Eli brought Justin away from whatever was transpiring between them both, but the truth was, there was nothing echoing between the two but silence.
A silence on the outside while a screaming tornado ricocheted on the inside. Fortunately, however, this aided Justin in at least funding some of the strength to turn back to Eli, even forcing himself to show him a weak smile despite it all.
He didn't know why he did that. He didn't want to smile at all and certainly not at Eli as he remembered all the viable hell that he had put him through over the years. But it had been the same vice versa and he couldn't allow pride to shield him from that disappointing truth.
Justin had hurt Eli so much that even a cursed man who had once felt nothing experienced the sensation of bleeding to death while having a cold and scarcely beating heart only just putting the rest of his body through the paces.
He hadn't thought about the truth of his nature in a long time, but he did there and then. He had always believed that it was a great many human things that ended up separating the two of them, but they were destined to fail from the beginning. How could flesh and blood perfectly mold to someone who felt all life draining from them from the moment that they splintered their finger on that peculiar thing in the pits of Desert Resort?
He would not ever really know but in that moment, Justin and Eli were thinking of similar things. And in hindsight, the younger of the two would look back with more perspective than ever before when he relished in the knowledge that, when he felt Eli looking over at him, like they had the same invisible string pulling behind their eyes, he couldn't help but glance in the same manner.
And when Justin couldn't help but survey and then read the expression that grooved Eli's eyelashes against each other, he knew that he had to encourage him to speak up. He tried to nurture that way back.
Part of him only asked because he thought that he would never comply.
"Ask me…" he tried his best to encourage naturally when he saw the rim of Eli's thumb pressing against a sharp bit of a white tooth that cut like a diamond, persisting further with the reasoning that curly sprigs of hair would shake, and a mouth would proceed to clamp shut. "You can ask me anything."
A pondering glance disappeared in a split second and a disagreeing frown took over for even less time. Then, with a torrent of wind escaping from his nostrils, Eli spoke what he thought without saying anything at all.
Not what he had initially been thinking, no. But he informed Justin that he believed that he had been goading him, tricking him that he could ask him anything when the reality was that he was entitled to nothing, not a single thing from him and certainly not to tell him the truth.
Certainly not after everything.
But Justin didn't catch onto this message that lasted the briefest of ticking noises from the wall clock. Or if he did, he pretended that he didn't. He waited for Eli to articulate himself with words.
And he did.
"If the hands of time would wind back and you were twenty-one again…" he started and like how it was when Eli yanked his hand away from his when they were meant to intwine, Justin still knew exactly what this meant when he heard these words. He knew what was coming. "Would you do it all again? Or would you run miles and miles away from me…?"
The sigh that escaped from Justin's parted lips as a frown decorated his forehead was prompt even if the words that he wanted to say took a while to come. He thought about it, he really thought about it. he didn't agonize over it. But he certainly mulled it over.
Eli almost hated that. He wished that he had been rash and said the first thing that came into his mind like he used to do when they were together. In time, he would be glad how things turned out. But when he was in the eye of that potentially raging storm that was only just the exhale of a breath at that point, he just wanted it to finish.
Funny that he needed to be more patient. That had been Justin's biggest fault way back when.
Tousled locks of Justin's became scratched as he pondered further and further still. In the end, he decided it best to just be honest. That hadn't always been easy for him. For both of them. But there was no sense in lying.
Eli would have wheedled the truth out of him eventually.
"It depends on the day… Everything about us was so heightened and volatile and unsustainable…" Justin put forth and Eli could not stop his eyelashes that were as thick as some creatures in the sands of his true home from clapping together as he realized, this was probably the first time Justin had used relatively kind words. And for the first time in a long time, what they had been was an us again. Even if they went back and forth whether that was even true. "I don't know, Eli. It depends how foolish and bonkers and stupid I'm willing to allow myself to stoop."
He started to backtrack on his previous glimpse as maturity. As his heartrate when it came to Eli presented itself, he found himself reverting to old ways and he couldn't help himself. There was something about it that when his cheeks possessed a red flush and he could feel himself boiling from the inside and out, heartrate throbbing in his ears, he just wanted to blow off steam by letting off words to get a reaction.
It wasn't even all that thought about there and then. He was still just being honest. But it caused Eli's inquisitively wide yet sunken eyes to revolve in his sockets.
"Whatever, Justin." Eli believed that he had said but it was his turn to feel the walls of his mouth shrinking incredibly small against his tongue and it lolled and slurred against the inside of his cheek.
It was ambiguous what he actually said even if the sentiment was known. And, funnily enough, the split second after this erupted from Eli, something came from Justin.
It was a word, and it was spoken in a manner that was crystal clear, counteracting the haze of Eli's uttering. It was a word that wanted to loom backwards, hiding in the dark. But it escaped.
Justin's true answer escaped in just one word.
"Yes." He confessed and with that, a hand of his concealed his cheek and his middle finger swanned upwards towards the eye and plinked it shut for just a moment or two. It wasn't an act of arrogance or defiance.
And the silence that rung afterwards from his point of view, was not a heavy one. He was free to admit this because he had chosen his correct path in life. He had said goodbye to someone who was ashamed to be with him and would never be his true self and certainly not encourage him to do the exact same thing.
Instead, Justin had embraced the person who had always been there. Sammy. They were not wed like one of them had planned. But they had children. They had a house. They had a future. They were exactly where they were meant to be with each other.
Justin wanted to reach for his guitar. His honesty had spoken. Eli couldn't object to the noise now, could he?
Eli went on to object to other things.
It was true that, in return, he had not been goading Justin and he had not been asking questions that he thought would go unanswered for the sake of it. But regardless, when that answer came, although he was in silent agreement that he had chosen the right path for himself too with the hand held out to him by Lucy, that single word had floored him.
He always imagined that that word would floor him when he got down on his knee and asked for a lifetime with Justin and the answer replied. He never imagined that this word would go on to knock him for six when it came to something that, when Justin had been twenty-one or twenty-two years old, had felt so unstoppable. Until the last few days of their relationship with the ticking time bomb, of course.
It wasn't enough for Eli to draw the oxygen into his lungs when the single word sunk into his skin furthermore. It wasn't enough for him to just stand up suddenly either, feeling Justin's eyes travel to him and upwards immediately like he was an exhibit that couldn't be let out of sight.
"Jesus, I need a smoke." Eli said his own answer and though it wasn't anything of the kind to look at, his brow felt damp with all the thoughts that were spinning around his head and certainly, ones that he had drummed into himself possessed a different kind of answer many, many years ago.
As Eli prepared to lurch and leave, it wasn't rare for Justin to be quick on his feet but there and there it came as a surprise. Immediately from the second that he saw Eli pawing his own brow as if his thoughts could be consoled by just doing that, a wash of guilt rushed over him that, when it came to that particular male, he hadn't felt for quite a long time.
Other people, sure. Other people, he felt that nearly every other day.
He had pushed guilt regarding Eli out of the other end of him a long time ago. But there it was, back again and more threatening than ever. He didn't know what washed over him, or rather, what crashed into him. But before he could stop himself, his hand hooked through Eli's arm and spun his short stature back around to face him.
"Don't do that because of me. I thought you wanted me to be honest…" Katie might not have pleaded when she had been directing Justin, but he certainly did in that moment. As the second sentence came, Justin's eyes squeezed together in anguish. They were forced to re-open when Eli shot him a breathless look that he couldn't quite read and shook his hand away from the crook of his arm. "Are things still normal between us?"
Justin didn't just ask. He begged. He hated that. God, he hated that. But everything they had discussed was a long time coming and almost three whole years in the making. And he couldn't deny himself reality anymore – when Eli shook his hand away from him like he was an annoying child sullying the day with his company, he suddenly felt desperate to know what place he held in his life.
He had been told himself that they were not friends. So, what were they?
To be sure, he still didn't get an answer as Eli's face contorted and twisted, rummaging into the pocket of his trousers for his cigarette packet and edging one out and away from the rest of the others before Justin could get any other ideas of taking hold of him once more.
"I don't think things have ever been normal between us, Justin." Eli answered plainly and again, he tried to dodge out of the way and to head to where he really wanted to be. With nicotine blurring and warming his vision and the breath of smoke settling everything that he had heard on that day.
He shouldn't have been caught off guard by the promptness of Justin's response. It was as though he had yanked him back to face him all over again even if no single touch transpired between them at that point. Instead, it was just the latching of eyes. And it was the expression on a youthful face that had never painted itself there, not even during their earliest of days.
Justin's heart really had opened. And it showed that with care towards someone who had wronged him repeatedly and vice versa.
"But are you okay?" Again, a plea sounded. He was Eli's reflection as his expression contorted, eyes squinting together with the depth in his words. It wasn't even hope. It was new for him. To ask such a thing. But when it came, although it swirled around in his mouth during the aftermath, it felt necessary too.
This was another thing that floored Eli on that day. Such a rarity to hear such a thing from Justin. Sure, checking up on each other was a frequent thing when they first met but it was never like that. It was spoken in different ways.
Which region are you in? Can I come to your show? Have you caught up with Jordan lately? What music have you been listening to?
A million separate ways to ask how someone is doing. And in truth, a million varied reasons to say I love you. Even if that real three worded sentence wouldn't come for an extremely long time. And maybe if it never would again.
Eli didn't know quite how to react to any of that. part of him wanted to draw the lighter out of his pocket at that very minute too and start smoking straight away, needing to settle his nerves increasingly with each second that past.
For a fleeting second, it was on the tip of his tongue that Justin had never asked him that. Not when he freaked out the first time and wouldn't be seen dead holding hands with him in public. Not when he was in a bundle at the bottom of the stairs following the two of them being caught by a cleaner in a moment of passionate heat. Certainly not the nights were eerie and lonesome, and an empty bed was the only company.
But that urge, well, that urge came and went. And for a split second, something almost amused Eli. His eyelid threatened to twitch, his iris to glint! Then that mellowed too. and for the first time in a long time, he was able to take things as they were. And he was able to respond in a way that even he could deem the right way.
"I'm fine. I just need to have one little smoke." Eli began to explain but growing up in the household that he still felt lucky to call his home, it was never just that. The same with alcohol, it was never just one little glass. And of course, with Sammy… He didn't even like to go there. He just knew that he was often the cause of people needing to dull their senses and that was a permanent chain tugging down his heart. Out of nowhere, he felt something elevating his chin that had sunk too. "Come out and join me if I'm not back in ten minutes, okay? You'll see."
And with that, Justin felt a tingling like the frost of a specter had danced across his jawline as the pads of Eli's fingers touched underneath his chin before, as if he were the ghost that he was inside, that swanned away from him, and he was at last alone in the living room.
Justin's heart was hammering inside his ears, causing them to agonizingly blush yet he did not crumble. His throat constricted by barbed wire, but he still could breathe. He still could talk. And he was able to when Katie decided that to be the moment to return after an awfully long time.
Typical!
She didn't even have her laptop in her hold. She had clearly forgotten to fetch that as well as to not leave Justin and Eli alone together.
The ghostliness of the living room was contagious, and she became as white as the sunlight that had once been streaming in through the window when she saw the silhouette of Justin loosely standing there and caught onto the tail end of Eli as he left out the back door.
Immediately, two hands that were never warm cupped on either side of Justin's face but didn't freeze him into further shock. Somehow, despite their natural ice, their care thawed him through.
He found it effortless to meet her concerned, knowing gaze.
"Did he say something nasty?" Katie feared, her expression while not ducking or faltering, displaying equal measures of dismay as care when it dawned on her that that was a thing of the past. That should be a thing of the past. And it shouldn't have happened again.
Justin swallowed. Justin swallowed and for half a second he was in a daze and wanted to say yes because that was the word that dazed Eli so. But then he realised. Then he remembered. And he proved to her that she was the beginning of all of this – that she was the reason that he had learned to speak from that sewn together heart of his – by the smile that etched his mouth along like strings of a puppet and a truthful glint enveloping his eyes.
Katie felt a clammy touch but that of which belonged to Justin, so it was okay on either one of her shoulders, remarkably close to the patch where her collarbones met her neck. Justin laughed. Just once, Justin erupted into a brief laugh. And he couldn't help but move head, either side of his nose crinkling as he eyed up the cloud of smoke that had followed Eli in his wake.
"No. No, he didn't." said Justin, shaking his head from side to side before looking back at Katie, unable to resist seeking refuge and comfort in her gaze because she knew that she would listen no matter if he would be able to fully unfurl a sentence or not. "Worse. He said something…" a catch in his breath that was not the truth he was not allowed to spill catching up with him. Justin couldn't bring himself to say the word nice. His shoulders relaxed a touch more, sinking down when Katie's other hand moved to the back of his locks traipsing down the nape of his neck, stroking them. "He said something that made me feel like we might be on the same page for the first time in a very long time. And that's just so exciting."
And with that, Katie wasn't blessed with the ability to look into his eyes for all that much longer, searching and scanning him for more that he wanted to say even if the words could not formulate. For a moment, his head bowed towards hers and their foreheads touched.
This was a lightbulb in and of itself. You might think that Katie's response is a bit of a lame one. Or even a dismissive one. But in the same way that gazing into the eyes of Justin would give her the answers that she needed, the touch affirmed that too.
It was at this moment that both her hands were loosely in his hair, this connecting them both as well as their unfaltering friendship.
"Ohh…" Katie murmured which might have sounded like that to some people but in truth it was spoken in more of an appreciative cooing noise. A few more strokes of Justin's hair later and him in return lightly, playfully reaching to tap the dimple that resides on her cheek as soon as she smiled or even just spoke, she had her own words to say. Her side then pressed against his and her singular arm wrapped tightly around his neck. "Will you take a picture of the plant that Eli got me in the sun over there? I want to see it as you do because it so reminds me of you."
With that, his own dimple was tapped. With that, he sensed a camera strap discarded from around her neck and feeling it draped around his like a scarf instead. He could have tilted his head towards her, prying, making her answer why exactly it gave her such a reminder of him. But to tell you the truth, it was glaringly obvious!
And of course like the beginning of this tale goes, after a kiss pressed to the forehead of Katie, Justin turned around on his heel and sized up to his twin, realizing that he was going to have to crouch down in an uncomfortable position to get all of the tall and thin albeit sturdy stalks of the plant in the frame as well the looming leaves that made it seem like it had an impossibly large head on a spindly neck.
Cheers Katie!
Justin didn't utter these words in sentences, but he uttered them in a chuckle at the base of his throat. But soon enough, he got snapping. And when he felt his best friend traipsing behind him, soon wrapping her arms around his narrow frame and nuzzling her face against his shoulder while he captured everything exactly for her, the new shade in his eyes was not the reflection of the majestic plant splayed out in front of him.
Knowing is such a fickle thing and we can know such an awful lot looking back. It's funny how Eli stated that he and Justin were not friends, and they could never view each other as such. But on that day, they displayed friendship. They displayed the listening ear of two children in school together. They displayed the rocky fireworks of enemies who can't make their mind up of whether they hate each other or love each other.
They portrayed the passion of lovers. So that's why Justin should have known, and Eli too. And Katie should have said something from the minute it crossed her mind.
The two of them would never be friends. They would never be enemies. They would never be lovers. They could never go back and change the past. But they could be all these things. They could companionably go through life together. They could bring out the worst in each other and thereby nurture the best like a rising phoenix. They could do each and every thing and speak of each and every word with passion.
They could unwind the knots of the past. By sending ropes out towards the future and climbing in that direction instead.
They could never just be one thing. They would always be everything. The last day of summer. The whistling wind of snow fall just around the corner. The beat of a drum. The very last heartbeat. A crisp autumn leaf underfoot.
In the end, only one word displays all in which they are.
They are destined. For greatness. For fallouts. For their very own path.
And Katie thought about this as she saw the world reflected through the camera screen in which Justin captured.
And how, she wished, Justin could go everywhere that he was called to go. Even if it lasted for a single heartbeat. Everyone deserves to be immortalized by an artist, a musician, a guitar player. She had been so lucky once.
But then it was time for someone else to be his next forever. His true forever.
The End.
There you go! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed :) Damn, I can't believe I wrote this in one sitting! It's a long one, but I remember being really inspired simply to write after reading a good book and to put what I had learned from that into the story. Aside from enjoying the tension between Justin and Eli, I of course loved getting to portray not only Justin and Katie here, but her with Eli as well. She certainly holds him dear, and you can tell by their dynamic, and their shared hobby of getting behind a camera :) I think this is the moment that, whether Katie realises it or not, that Justin and Eli are meant to be. She couldn't possibly have known what was around the corner and neither could they, but this chapter implies that they could never be off the table! Thanks again for reading and I will be back on the 28th to update Letters That Changed Everything so see you then :D
Amy signing out!