This was never supposed to be nothin' but a little somethin' to do

COLT

She's a runner, she's a lover, always stuck in her ways
Pull her closer, think you know her, now she's turning the page
She gave a warning if it's storming, she'll be gone with the rain

She intended to melt into this meadow, unsure she'd ever leave, too drained after everything. So many of the things she'd believed had collapsed at once that she barely knew where to put her feet anymore, so surrendering to the grass seemed a fine enough choice.

That is, until he moves. She half-thinks he means to leave as he shifts, and her pulse jumps up like it alone could chase him down. He only changes his position, but she loses the ability to see him properly, nothing better than limbs and distant features from her angle. Abandoning her melt, she hauls herself back up into a sit, settling into a lean over her knees as her gaze gently peels away the dark to find the plane of his features once more, hoping she'd find something there that could align better with her than his words.

There's a crinkle of bitter certainty to the stare he pours down the horizon, as if seeing visions of a future in that distant dark. All the careful fortifications she'd once watched him lift up aren't so present now, and it catches her argument in her throat. She watches him wade through the difficulty of his own decision, the same one he's already made, ringed with enough regret to sit here with her and crumble away bit by bit. What remains is just the bare bones of a truth that wanting is not enough. 

When his attention slides back fully to her, cautious enough to use a shoulder as a buffer, she's struck by the strange vulnerability of him. The man who'd once seemed impossible to rattle now looks almost afraid of the answer he'll find in her face, and she isn't sure when she was given the power to scare him when he can do just the same ro her. Maybe that's the shape affection always takes. "So that's the plan?" The ask wavers, the grief of sitting so close to someone that's still out of reach giving it too much weight to travel far. "We spend the rest of our lives missing each other, and I only get to see you when everything's gone to shit?"

When she's in it, she's all in it, ain't no holding her back
When I'm with her, she's a river moving steady and fast
She's afraid of all the ways her heart is broke like glass

I need your hand but I don't want to burn it

Vesper lets the question settle while he rolls his shoulders, trying to work loose the tension that has crept high enough to brush his ears. There’s no clean answer waiting for him, only the shape of the year behind them and the narrow possibilities left now that neither of them can pretend the distance was easy. "Well, I did spend the last year avoidin' you," he says eventually, the dryness in his voice softened by the fact that it isn’t a joke. "I won’t have to do that now." That would close part of the distance, at least.

He glances toward her as one hand passes back through his hair, the pale strands darkening beneath his fingers as his magic moves through them before fading slowly back to moonlight. His sigh follows the motion, low and tired, while he considers the one thing he can offer without promising what he still believes would ruin them both. "We could be friends, I guess." The last two words land with all the awkwardness they deserve, not because he doesn’t want it, but because suggesting friendship after everything between them feels laughably small and painfully difficult at once. Still, despite the history knotted around them—or perhaps because of it—it’s the only shape he can imagine holding without breaking beneath the weight of everything else.

Vesper turns more fully toward her then, blue eyes searching out the amber of hers as his expression settles into something quieter than resignation. "The choice is yours."

No I don't deserve it, I don't deserve it

COLT

She's a runner, she's a lover, always stuck in her ways
Pull her closer, think you know her, now she's turning the page
She gave a warning if it's storming, she'll be gone with the rain

The choice that is extended to her feels about as genuine as the ones she gives her horses. Bend the way I want or feel a spur. She finds an immediate distaste for the illusion of it. Later she might be of a sounder mind to recognize the fact that he likely felt the same all along, because wishing for more or better options doesn't produce them.

Friends slides down into her chest with a heat that means to turn things to ash. Bile rises in response, climbing up her throat and shaping her mouth around an immediate refusal, but the scald of it all has burned her words away. She can't imagine how to find the space between holding him and holding him back, but she has never tried. Distance has already failed them, though perhaps it would fare better now without the thorn he'd driven between them, attempting to score every memory and reminder. Nearness hadn't managed any better, wringing them both out until they had cracked and splintered, slivers burying into one another. Without teeth constantly bared, maybe they'd have the capability to stand closer now without being bitten each time. Although no friend of hers surfaces in her mind every day, and...

Abruptly aware that he's following every turn she makes, she stiffens, gaze darting away as though not seeing him might shelter her. She stares into the dark and does her best to wash her thoughts of him, although that belongs to him too. Her hands snap up some bits of grass, and the feeling gives her an anchor as her fingers begin to tear and toss away bits of the blades like morose confetti. "I'm not choosing tonight." The decision pulls itself thin over her teeth as her features draw into something taut, the sound low with its fragile discipline. Her hands still as she looks back to him, the amber of her unable to settle as she tries to hold onto all of him in the only way she still can.

She doesn't know what answer she expected from him, nor which one she entirely wanted, not when there's too much pressing in on her. Gradually, she's buckling beneath it, anything else too much while she's tried to keep it all from collapsing over a moment she never expects to have again. Not just a chance to sit with him, but something far more precious, rare enough that she can't even name it. Unarmored in all the ways she has never been able to give in return, not willingly anyway, he let her know him. The moment they depart from here, that will inevitably change. The world is too unkind to stay bare for long, and even her hands can bruise what he doesn't protect. Especially her hands. She glances down at them, wet from the torn grass, and it might as well be the slick shine of blood.

Gathering the weight of everything laid at her feet, Colt moves to stand, every inch of it reluctant, as though she hasn't quite figured out how to carry this meadow with her, or how to leave it behind.

When she's in it, she's all in it, ain't no holding her back
When I'm with her, she's a river moving steady and fast
She's afraid of all the ways her heart is broke like glass

I need your hand but I don't want to burn it

Vesper feels the offer strike every sharpened edge inside her, friendship turning hot and acrid as it sinks through all the things she still wants and has no intention of naming tonight, and the careful neutrality he has worn around other people’s thoughts for most of his life slides back into place across his face. The urge to grind his teeth is there, along with the impulse to let out a frustrated breath and ask what other answer she expected him to give, but neither reaches the surface. He has too much practice holding still while another person’s mind says what their mouth never would, but that doesn’t make them any easier to bear.

Only moments ago, the warmth of her fingers between his had drawn up images with an ease that frightened him: leaning across the narrow space between them, tasting peppermint from her mouth, catching her by the wrist and pulling her back the way he once had when she tried to walk away from him. Those possibilities still linger, bright and bodily, but the revulsion curling around the shape of friendship cuts through them cleanly enough to remind him why reaching for any of it would be a mistake. He won’t fault her for the thoughts she never intended him to hear, not after everything he’s admitted tonight, though understanding where they come from does nothing to blunt the way they scrape against him.

When she refuses to choose, Vesper inclines his head, accepting the answer without argument. It is, at least, an answer she has made for herself, and he won’t try to pull another from her merely because uncertainty leaves him standing in the same uncomfortable dark as she is.

He watches her gather herself from the grass, all that reluctance moving through her like weight being lifted onto shoulders already worn thin, before he pushes himself upright as well. His long frame unfolds more slowly than usual, his shoulders taut beneath the combined pressure of everything still moving through her mind and everything he has finally allowed out of his own, and for a moment he stands facing her with the strange sense that the meadow has become a border neither of them knows how to cross.

His shadows answer the smallest shift of his attention, slipping soundlessly through the grass toward where the bottles had fallen earlier. They gather around the rum and the smaller vial bound against it, lifting both without disturbing the glass before carrying them back through the dark to hover near his hand. In the grand shape of what has passed between them, accepting the gift feels almost absurd, a piece of ordinary etiquette left standing amid wreckage, but leaving it behind would turn her care into one more thing he’d refused to take from her. Saying nothing would be worse. "Thanks for these," Vesper says, the words quiet and thick as he nods toward the bottles suspended in his shadows.

His gaze catches on her for a moment longer, blue searching amber as though there might still be something left to say that won’t split the night open again, but nothing safe presents itself. Turning on his heel, he starts back toward camp with his spine held rigid and his eyes lowered to the grass ahead, carrying the liquor beside him and the far heavier knowledge that, for the first time in a year, Colt no longer misunderstands why he left. It should feel like relief. Instead, every step away from her feels much the same as the first.

~FIN

No I don't deserve it, I don't deserve it