you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody
you know what song I'm listening to for this and every line fits
Flora, who has never once minded the way Jack touches her, who has thrived on it, melted into it, ached for it—would have arched herself helplessly into the warmth of his hand if not for the wounds that mar her back. As it is, her body still tries, shifting with a soft gasp as if the impulse alone could erase the pain, as if desire might triumph over everything else they’ve broken between them.
His voice—gods, his voice—is like seafoam caught in her hair, warm and hushed and utterly him, murmuring against her like a secret or a promise that's no longer hers to keep anymore. She leans into it, into him, even as he fixes her mascara with fingers far too gentle for someone who’s wielded storms and anger and silence against her for so long. And when he says he’d still let her—that she could keep being too much, and he’d still hold that weight with everything else he carries—it tears something open inside her.
She doesn’t know whether to cry or to laugh or to just say fuck it and pull him down into the wreckage so they can be miserable together. It should be simple, but it's never been simple with them, and before she can decide which way to fall, he kisses her.
At first, she doesn’t kiss him back. Not properly, if only because her lips are trembling too much, her chest is rising too quickly, and her breath catches on the sob that builds like a tide against her ribs. The kiss tastes like grief and goodbye and sea-salt memory, like something sacred pressed between palms that cannot stop shaking. Her mind rains harder, but it’s warm, it’s soft, it’s his—and gods, nothing has ever hurt this much. Not dying. Not screaming at one another across the dock. Not being left. Because this isn’t a break. This is an ending. This is it.
Pulling him tighter, desperate to outrun the moment, Flora sips in a breath that tastes like him, brackish and sharp and impossibly sweet. Her lips tremble against his as she kisses him back with the kind of aching slowness that only comes when everything else has already fallen away. Her tears streak down both of their cheeks now, silent and unrelenting, a storm with no lightning, only weight.
When her lungs give out again, when another sob hitches high and tight in her throat, she breaks just enough to whisper against the seam of his mouth, "I’ll never not love you." Her voice is cracked glass, tender and unfixable. Her fingers clutch at his collar like she could stitch herself into the shape of him if only she held on hard enough. Then, without waiting for breath or forgiveness or the world to stop ending, she rises onto her toes to kiss him again.
Flora, who has never once minded the way Jack touches her, who has thrived on it, melted into it, ached for it—would have arched herself helplessly into the warmth of his hand if not for the wounds that mar her back. As it is, her body still tries, shifting with a soft gasp as if the impulse alone could erase the pain, as if desire might triumph over everything else they’ve broken between them.
His voice—gods, his voice—is like seafoam caught in her hair, warm and hushed and utterly him, murmuring against her like a secret or a promise that's no longer hers to keep anymore. She leans into it, into him, even as he fixes her mascara with fingers far too gentle for someone who’s wielded storms and anger and silence against her for so long. And when he says he’d still let her—that she could keep being too much, and he’d still hold that weight with everything else he carries—it tears something open inside her.
She doesn’t know whether to cry or to laugh or to just say fuck it and pull him down into the wreckage so they can be miserable together. It should be simple, but it's never been simple with them, and before she can decide which way to fall, he kisses her.
At first, she doesn’t kiss him back. Not properly, if only because her lips are trembling too much, her chest is rising too quickly, and her breath catches on the sob that builds like a tide against her ribs. The kiss tastes like grief and goodbye and sea-salt memory, like something sacred pressed between palms that cannot stop shaking. Her mind rains harder, but it’s warm, it’s soft, it’s his—and gods, nothing has ever hurt this much. Not dying. Not screaming at one another across the dock. Not being left. Because this isn’t a break. This is an ending. This is it.
Pulling him tighter, desperate to outrun the moment, Flora sips in a breath that tastes like him, brackish and sharp and impossibly sweet. Her lips tremble against his as she kisses him back with the kind of aching slowness that only comes when everything else has already fallen away. Her tears streak down both of their cheeks now, silent and unrelenting, a storm with no lightning, only weight.
When her lungs give out again, when another sob hitches high and tight in her throat, she breaks just enough to whisper against the seam of his mouth, "I’ll never not love you." Her voice is cracked glass, tender and unfixable. Her fingers clutch at his collar like she could stitch herself into the shape of him if only she held on hard enough. Then, without waiting for breath or forgiveness or the world to stop ending, she rises onto her toes to kiss him again.
