tryna get my Usher on but I can't let it burn

Flora

"I distinctly remember you saying you were gonna hit up the markets," Flora grumbles as he tugs her through the crowd, her hand still tangled in his and her boots dodging uneven cobbles and fruit vendors like it’s some kind of obstacle course he designed just to prove a point. "And yet here I am, being drag-raced past all the good food, Kaisel."

But there’s no real bite to it, not when the sun’s peeking through bright awnings overhead and bubbles are catching the light like tiny chandeliers. Still, she can’t help the flicker of suspicion in her narrowed eyes as he pulls them to a stop nowhere near anything remotely edible. Her brain’s already preparing for some frog-related prank, or gods forbid, an actual dragon waiting to pounce and prove him right.

Instead, his grip shifts—firmer, more intentional—and her confusion blooms in the subtle arch of her brow just before he speaks. The words reach her just ahead of the full blush that threatens to betray her, and her lips part in a small O of surprise, wonder dawning like sunrise. His smile is tilted and sun-warmed, the music around them catching in her chest like a held breath.

A dance. Because he'd remembered. Because, like so many other things, he refused to let it go, even when she’d tucked it away like a forgotten seashell in a drawer she hadn’t dared to open.

Her smile curves slowly, gently, as though it’s being drawn out by something inside her she didn’t know was still tender enough to respond. And gods, there’s no armour for this. No clever quip for the way her stomach swoops or her pulse skips or her hands feel too warm for her own skin. There’s just the softness of his eyes, the tilt of his grin, the echo of the music that’s already starting to thread through her bones.

Sliding her free hand up to his shoulder, she frowns when her fingers land against the strap of his backpack instead of the line of him she wanted to feel. It’s dumb—stupid and meaningless—but it snags in her chest like a burr. She presses her hand there anyway, swallowing hard as she steps in close, her breath catching as the memory of what could have been wraps around her like a second skin. What might have happened if she'd danced with him then, instead of pushing him back to Caly?

"That night," she says, her voice softer than she means it to be, "feels like it was a hundred years ago." The ache seeps into the corners of her smile, too heavy to hide and too old to smooth away completely. But she clears her throat and meets his eyes, steady despite everything tangled beneath the surface. "I think...part of me thought I might go home with you that night."

I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff,
finding some peace in an honest love
Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Honey wherever you go, I know

"As if I'd leave you alone to set a trap," he scoffs, the sound faint around the smile he wears. The long pull of his name out of her is something warm and lovely that sinks into the empty space between the skips of his heart. Normally the extra letters are a precursor to something that'll sting, but there's no scorching anger or chilled disappointment this time, not even the put on ones that lead to a laugh. This one's just petal-soft and flower-sweet.

Each time he quietly braces for her refusal, reaching out carefully into open space and expecting to bump into a pane of glass, but the force of the collision never comes. He can't quite tell if he's made up a maze when he's been in a meadow the whole time. He'd spent so long keeping himself behind the shape of a line, maintaining her as something out of reach, that finding out it's as easy as extending his hand and taking a step, sends him reeling. A small rush in his gut, like stepping off a stair one step earlier than you thought, but still managing to stand on solid ground.

The sprawl of her smile and the transition of her cheeks into something rose gold is enough to keep him always grasping into the unknown, balance be damned. Her hand settled against his shoulder strap, and there's gravity to it that steadies him as his finds her waist, pulling her into the flow of the music with steps too sure to betray the worry that'd just been there. The expanse of her eyes is all he sees now, the wash of the world around them like a separate life that will make space for them to move amongst, because moments stretch on with their own time in the space between two dancers, especially when love is on the line.

"I didn't think you were living to a hundred," he laughs faintly, "and I must say you don't look a day over twenty. Guess frog skin care is worth all the rave reviews." The sound of humor quiets under the weight of what she means, even as he strives to keep them weightless. "You went home with me every night Flora, you just didn't know it." He sends her into a spin away from him for just a breath before tugging her back in. "There's always tonight," he says softly, taking another grasp for glass.

Kaisel

I'd give up half of forever, just to be with you

Flora

Flora snorts, the sound entirely unladylike and all the more satisfying for it, eyes wide with mock innocence as she leans in a fraction closer, her smile tugging sly at the corner of her lips. "And how do you know I haven’t set one already?" she murmurs, saccharine and threatening all at once, the kind of sugar that sticks to your teeth just before it cuts your tongue.

His frog-skincare comment earns a flutter of lashes and a dramatic trill of, "Thank you," as if she’s some pampered princess at a press line and not a girl with sand clinging to her ankles and poisonous daggers at her hip. She keeps her focus fixed on the joke, determined not to think about the way his hand settles so easily at her waist, anchoring her like something that has always belonged. The feel of him—of this—is unnervingly familiar, like muscle memory stitched with new silk, soft where it shouldn’t be, dizzying where it absolutely should.

As he spins her, the smile still touches her lips as she turns, but it begins to hollow even before her eyes leave his. There's something about the words—You went home with me every night—that catch like a burr beneath her ribs. She doesn’t know if it’s the implication, the poetry, or the lie threaded so sweetly between the syllables, but by the time she’s folded back into his arms, the blush has drained from her cheeks and her smile wilts into something quieter. Something ache-soft and devastated.

"Kai…" Her voice is hushed, barely more than breath against the music.

She doesn’t mean to let her hurt reappear like this, doesn’t mean to fold the light between them back into shadow. But the cold that seeps beneath her skin is sudden and total, like the plunge into a tidepool she hadn’t seen coming. He can’t possibly mean it, not after everything. Not after the words he'd written, the sweetness he'd offered to someone else, the careful kind of love he’d tried to build with Caly. If she really had gone home with him every night, then why had he put so much effort into kindling something new so immediately with someone else? The only reason she could think was that while she'd always been loud in Kaisel's world, he'd only thought of her as a fantasy rather than something real. Something worth waiting or trying for.

She swallows hard. Her feet slow, steps faltering as if the rhythm has shifted beneath her, music no longer a melody but a tide she doesn’t trust. Her lips part like she wants to say something—needs to—but nothing comes. Every phrase splinters before it can take shape. No feels too sharp, too final. But yes would be a lie and a mistake all at once.

Her gaze lifts to his, to the copper warmth of his eyes, and for a breath, she searches for a version of this where she doesn’t have to be the one to ruin it, but long as she looks, she can't seem to; not when the hurt still lives between the cracks. So, a gentle shake of her head is all she manages as she whispers, "I can't."

I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff,
finding some peace in an honest love
Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Honey wherever you go, I know

There it is, the glass—the same thought every bird has as it breaks its neck.

He sees it too late, the words already out of his mouth, but the shine of it is there in her eyes, just a little bit off from before when it had been open space. She's given him hope like he's never had before though, so the idea that a little too much Windex could ruin this doesn't surface. He'd anticipated more ice, had already steeled himself for weeding through thorns until the garden thrived again, so them missing a step or two on the dance floor is something easy to brush off.

At least, that's what he tries to tell himself as he wills his smile not to fade even as the rhythm starts to. "Oh," he says simply, a subtle tilt finding his head as he let's her slow them both into something that's more drift than dance. "Tomorrow night, then?" he suggests instead, well aware she's got a litany of responsibilities to attend to, proof as much when she barely took the time to recover after her attack. The same reason the night she mentioned feels so long ago already, because she isn't someone to stand idle, filling her days with multiple lifetimes, always full of motion like stopping for an instant might let something catch up.

He knows it's not so simple as it seems though, much as he'd like it to be just a schedule conflict. So he gradually stops them, the world still shut out, trying to settle around the axis they'd just been tilting along. His hand flexes against her waist, like he means to press it in closer, to keep back whatever is about to slip away. Same as he tried to hold onto time that night on the Sugar Tide, only to find it spilling through his fingers into nothing more than memory. Too many nights between them he wish he had done differently.

"I can wait," he says softer still, a whisper that he makes stand stronger, wanting it to be heard even if it has to crawl out raw and fragile. "I've been waiting, Ro." Which had seemed to be part of the problem, but for the first time, he's aware she might be waiting too, trapped on the other side of the divide he carved without meaning to.

Kaisel

I'd give up half of forever, just to be with you

Flora

Tomorrow night.

The words brush against her skin like a feather at first, but they settle too cold. Still, she doesn’t move; not as the music hums around them, not as a bubble floats past and bursts quietly against the shoulder of her sweater. The warmth of his palm lingers at her waist, but Flora stays still, the way a wave holds just before it crashes.

There’s always this with them. A thread that weaves gold and gossamer through the air when they’re together, and yet somehow they still keep walking in opposite directions along it. The same fabric, but stitched into different patterns. It’s beautiful, until it’s not. And this? This is not.

Flora steps back, and the chill hits instantly, but the loss of his touch is only part of it. Her seafoam cardigan might as well be gauze for how it fails to keep the sudden cold at bay, her arms crossing tight around her middle like she can trap the heat before it slips through her fingers, too.

Frustration flares first, painting her cheeks with colour again even as her eyes sharpen to something harder, more wounded. "You didn’t." Her voice is soft, a whisper dragged from the bottom of her lungs, but there's nothing gentle about it. It’s an accusation wrapped in silk, trembling at the seams as she forces her chin up. "You didn’t wait," she says again, clearer this time, breath sharper. "You started something with someone else."

The words taste bitter on her lips. Not because they’re a surprise—Flora’s been dancing with them in her chest since the Sugartide, since before—but because saying them aloud makes them real again. Irrevocable. Her fists clench before she catches herself, before she can betray how deep the splinter still goes. So she folds her arms across her stomach instead, locking it down, wrapping it up. Trying to keep herself from bleeding out in the middle of a sun-drenched street where strangers still sway to the music like everything’s fine.

"I know what I said," she huffs, the words half a sigh, half a sob that never breaks. "I told you to go be with Caly. I tried to do the right thing." Her gaze flicks up, catching his, storm-slick and sea-sharp. "But you were the one who did it. You built something with her, or at least tried to. You made plans. You wrote letters. You talked about her like...like she was it." No she wasn't saying he should have just stayed single forever, but having tried to kindle a love with someone else certainly undermined Flora's ability to believe him saying that he'd waited.

The next words come quieter, like they’ve slipped past her defences before she can stop them, unsure if they’re anger or ache or both. "So how am I ever supposed to believe that you’re not taking the memory of her home with you right now? Or someone else?"

I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff,
finding some peace in an honest love
Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Honey wherever you go, I know

She's pulled out of his grip before he can fight it, setting distance between them like she means for it to be noticed. A reminder, that whatever bridge building he thought they'd managed, it's still been mostly words and paper and little else. Her words also suggest they've started construction on two different ends of the gap, with her kneeling back in the past, and him already skipping ahead towards the future he sees on the horizon, a glimmer of promise threatening to become a mirage.

"I didn't mean I've been sitting alone," he tries to say, because Caly hasn't been his first either, and all the while Flora has been there. "I meant, I've been waiting for a sign that this could work." A hand gestures at the space between them, in case this isn't obvious. It flops against his side, growing colder by the second with the absence of her heat. "There's been too many things that always said it never would." The words come out careful, edging past the shape of Koa, Jack, and Caly like each one is still a sharp rim threatening to catch and tear. "Including us." At some point, they'd decided it could, but not together, and barely out loud. Before then though, they'd only ever promised each other that one night.

She folds in on herself, something he hates is starting to become familiar enough to know what it means. He runs a hand through his hair, agitated by all the missteps he's managing despite trying so hard not to, like he's been told to not step on a line but the path is so broken he can't help but toe over a crack once in a while. At least this time she's willing to admit she played a hand in the knot, but it does little to help untangle it, because blame is too pointed to untie something without ruining it. "When did I talk about her like she was it?" he wonders, startled by this idea more than anything, because for him she had never been. "She was someone I wanted to get to know, yeah, but we only ever had one proper date. She's practically a stranger." It's why he'd not been willing to risk a damn thing for Caly if it meant losing Flora, except apparently he had anyway.

His gaze doesn't leave her, hard as it is to watch her start to build another wall. "Flora," he starts, swallowing as he reaches a hand towards her, wanting to smooth her worries with the edge of his thumb, keep her from laying another brick down. "I tried to make room for her in my heart and it failed, because you already take up all the space that's there." He hadn't seen it clearly, too used to covering his feelings about Flora with an opaque polish, but Caly had. He'd been steadily stripping it off since, trying to buff a shine back to it.

"I waited for the chance. Now that I know it exists, I will wait, for you." He'd been warned not to lose himself, but with all the passion of someone who has never loved before, he intends to give himself over completely to the idea. He'd give up everything, for her. He'd told her he wanted the wreck of her, and he'd do it even if it meant coming apart in the process, because now he knows something he didn't back then, she does too. "You're the only one that I love, Flora." I'll make this right.

Kaisel

I'd give up half of forever, just to be with you

Flora

"If I’d walked in—" she interrupts, brow creased and mouth parted like she doesn’t even know what she’s about to say until the question barrels through her. "Would you have just dropped her?" Her eyes search his face, wild with a kind of wounded disbelief. "Would it have been that easy?" The hurt there doesn’t need to be explained, not really—not when the implication sits heavy in the space between them like smoke: If you could leave her for me, who’s to say you wouldn’t leave me for someone else?

But before she can untangle the knot of that thought, someone walks too close behind her, the press of the crowd reminding her they’re still in a crowded street, forcing her to take a half step nearer to Kai again, though the warmth she’d always expected from him feels more like memory than presence now.

"In your letter," she says, tone quieter, the words caught between accusation and uncertainty. "You made it sound like she was something more. But maybe that’s just you," she murmurs, eyes dropping. "Maybe you’re just...too sweet for your own good. Always saying what will make people feel good." That wasn't to say he said things purely because they were what people wanted to hear, but gods he really was sprinkles; there was something sweet and kind in almost everything about him.

As Kaisel's hand extends, for a moment she hesitates. It would be cruel not to take it, but her fingers slip into his like sea-glass worn by tide and time; all the edges dulled, the cold of it something that clings too long. Her hold is light, her body still not swaying toward his, as if her trust is still too bruised to lean.

But then he says it, you're the only one that I love, and it knocks the breath from her like a punch through glass, and her reaction is instant—her head shakes hard and sharp, the whisper of "Don’t" slipping out like a tremor. They’d laughed the words between each other affectionately and often, and she’d whispered it into the night aboard the Sugartide like a prayer before falling asleep. But this is different. This is standing at the altar of something sacred and broken, and all she can do is shiver beneath the weight of it.

She doesn’t let go of his hand, but her fingers tremble once in his, a ghost of pressure, soft and full of things she won’t say.

Her eyes drop to the middle of his chest, somewhere safe, away from the confused and hopeful copper of his gaze, somewhere that won’t undo her completely. "I wish it hadn’t happened like this," she murmurs, voice hushed and raw. Her free hand runs through her curls, pushing them back like she’s trying to clear her own head too, before she lifts her gaze to meet his again.

"I don’t not understand," she admits, the double negative catching awkward on her tongue, but it’s true. She can see how it all might’ve made sense from his side of the gap. But it doesn’t matter, not when the gap itself still yawns open on her side. "It still hurt," she says. "Those weeks I didn’t see you...it doesn't just all go away because you've explained." Her voice falters, something like a breathless ache curling behind her ribs. That it probably should, that life would be easier if emotions were reasonable is not something even Flora would argue with, but it still leaves her with cold fingers tucked against his and sad eyes unable to meet his. "I'm not the kind of person that you make things up to, Kai." Not least of all because no one had ever really tried, and so Flora had always found ways around it. Either time would bury the hurt...or it wouldn't.

I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff,
finding some peace in an honest love
Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Honey wherever you go, I know

"Flora," he sighs with the threat of a laugh, though it's bordering exasperation rather than humor. She still doesn't seem to grasp how much she means to him when he tells her. "I did drop her, just for the chance at a dance with you, remember?" He's certain she does, she'd just mentioned that night, but maybe it's stained her memory differently than his.

"I'd just had my mouth on her, Flora. And I still left."

Honestly, he's surprised Caly had given him the time of day after that, especially since he'd been dressed up as Flora, as if that hadn't been a cry for her attention disguised as just another one of his ridiculous antics. It had earned him the first kiss from Flora, he supposes, which he hadn't counted at the time because it hadn't felt like a real one, but maybe he'd been just as blind. "If I'd known then that you wanted to come home with me that night, I would have shut down the bar with you." Instead, she'd pushed him away and told him to go. He'd gone instead of fighting for something further, too stupid to realize her old patterns were being turned against him. The clarity of it sharpens now, like he's counting every chance he wasted because he'd listened to her words instead of the want buried beneath.

Something in him goes taut with that knowledge, humming just under the surface of his pulse.

As she steps in, her hand fits into his with the presence of a ghost, and his chest tightens, breath clinging to a rib as each word of hers lands like another brick between them. "I thought I was losing you," he whispers, the sound of it broken as it tears the grip of his voice from his sides with effort. "It felt like asking for more than the one night we had was going to break us, and losing what little I had of you seemed worse than risking more." So he'd turned to Caly, as she repeatedly pushed him to. Someone he'd hurt and wanted to make amends with. Someone he's tried to use as a place to bury his affections, since it seemed futile with Flora, like maybe he could learn how to love someone else if he tried. Now he has no interest in trying.

"I owed her an apology," he murmurs of the letter. "And, I wanted to try with her, because it didn't seem like there was room for that, with us. I thought it'd help...show I could still be your friend, even after everything." Because if trying for more with Flora had scared her off, maybe Caly could reassure her he wouldn't risk it again. Maybe it'd been to reassure himself, too.

He stills at the cut of her refusal, so softly spoken, but the heaviest thing she's asked him to bear. She's pushing back again, like she could put the words back in his mouth, the feelings back in the box he used to keep them in. His teeth press together, refusing to reclaim them. "I know," he says at last as she confesses to hurt that still thrives, his expression softening, wanting to weave himself around every point that still digs into her. "I know," The words sigh out of him, like admitting he can't change the past is the hardest thing he's ever faced. "I don't want you to hurt, Flora," his voice comes thinner, straining with the stretch to reach across the gap, snaring on each point of pain that's made itself known until the length of it is barely enough to manage the distance.

She won't look at him again, her fingers limp in his grip, but he won't fall for this old move of hers again. The one where she shoves, where she hides behind a cover she's slipped on to pretend. He reaches out for her chin, pulling it up as he leans in on the heels of it to kiss her. Deliberate this time, meaningful. A kiss not just to reach her, but to show her the future could be better than the past, if only they'd look the same way for once.

Kaisel

I'd give up half of forever, just to be with you

Flora

Flora shivers. It starts in her spine and ripples out across her shoulders, subtle as seafoam curling over the sand, and just as inevitable. Every word he gives her is meant to soothe, and maybe it would have, if this ache were newer, if the hurt didn’t already have roots twisted deep inside her. Instead, it makes her want to argue. That’s not how it felt. That’s not how it looked. But fighting him now—here, like this—feels like throwing stones at someone already bleeding and gods she can't tell which of them it's hurting more.

Only one thing rises past the swirl of it all. One stubborn truth with barbs on the edges that she can’t keep from spilling. "Distance was the wrong thing," she whispers, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from letting it crack further. Her voice folds in on itself, soft and sore. "It felt like leaving, and..." Remi had been the first to leave, with his retreat not just physical, but emotional. How he couldn’t bear to look at her and Enzo for what they reminded him of. So Vai had raised them. And Enzo—gods, Enzo. He’d promised to stay, but she’d cradled his body as it went still in the mud and blood of war. Jack had left her in stages, sometimes with silence, sometimes with heat, but always, always, in the end.

And now Kaisel. Not because he had to. Because he thought it would hurt less.

Her head shakes slowly, like she can’t understand how he ever thought that was the best choice. That he could hold onto her by pulling away. It makes her feel like he never really saw her at all.

"I know you don’t wan—" she starts to say, the words barely formed, but then his fingers are beneath her chin, coaxing her face back up toward his, and her voice vanishes into the space between them. The kiss lands like thunder after a storm that had already rolled on by. Delayed. Startling. The kind of thing you still flinch from even if you knew it might come.

Her breath catches in her throat, not quite a gasp, but close. Her lips part against his—not in invitation, not at first—but in astonishment. For a second, she just stands there, stunned and still, too full of adrenaline and grief to move. The last time she'd kissed him—really kissed him—had been in her bed, quiet and late, when she’d whispered that they could always stay the way they were in that moment. That kiss had been soft as a prayer, sealing a moment she’d wanted to keep safe. She’d leaned in then. This..this is something else.

Quite without her permission, her fingers are suddenly in his hair, curling upward as though she’s trying to find something solid to hold onto. Her body sways ever so slightly toward his like it’s being drawn in by a gravity she can’t control, rising onto her toes just enough that her weight shifts forward into the gap between them.

I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff,
finding some peace in an honest love
Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Honey wherever you go, I know

He doesn't need to hear another word from her—this tells him everything, feeding every hope she's lit until it's too bright to look at properly. It cracks back open that night, the one where he'd actually had her, the one that ruined the possibility of anything else for him. More fool him for trying to shut his eyes to it.

Every carefully drawn dream stretched into reality, every whispered want given to the night, every taste of forever claimed in the corners of her mouth—they all come rushing back. The thread of her fingers in his hair spills the moments across his mind like sand knocked from a jar, each granule a tiny breath he'd coaxed from her echoing across him. The subtle shift she takes towards him now is an image of her slouching down on the bench with him, hardship chased away with gummy worms and fingers lacing together over the distance of a kitchenette. Her tiptoe reach, pressing into him with a stronger version of the maybe she'd first offered, is the unmistakable instant where he fell too far to ever return.

His hands lower to each side of her thighs, grabbing around them, cupping under her ass to hoist her up, seating her against his waist without breaking the magic of her mouth. He wants to pull her as close as he can, to hold her like he's always wanted, completely and irrevocably. Breath feels useless—an interruption—if it means he has to let go of this. He might have risked the encroaching dark spots on the edge of his vision if not for the words he wants to ensure she hears in all the ways his lips can say it.

"I won't leave you," he whispers, rough with the drag of breath set into the fraction of space he relents in order to look at her. "I'm here," he promises, soft but steady, "with you." His gaze is unflinching, vibrant with the reflection of her. "I love you, Flora." Not said with the affectionate, short-handed roll of friendship like before. Not said offhand, like it's already known and trusted. This one, he says to her, raw as it leaves him because he pours as much of himself into it as he can manage while still keeping them upright.

Suddenly, turning his head fully to the side, he sucks in a deep breath and lets the world have it too. "I LOVE FLORA KAITO-TALIESIN!" He declares it to the market with as much volume as he can muster.

Kaisel

I'd give up half of forever, just to be with you

Flora

#fuckthetimeline

He lifts her like a secret he’s finally allowed to keep, arms wrapped like he’s stitching something whole around the ache in her. Her legs lock around his waist before she even thinks to tell them to, her fingers slipping against the straps of his stupid backpack as she fights for something—balance, breath, time, but she doesn’t have any of it.

And it should feel safe, this. Like she’s being held by something soft and warm and true. Like this is the part in the story where everything finally works out, where the boy says the words she’s always wanted to hear and means them with his whole chest, literally. But gods, it’s too much, because he says them—all of them. He breathes I won’t leave you like it’s a vow stitched between heartbeats, something steady and sure, and gods she can't help but hear the way Jack had only ever let himself come close to that sort of vow.. He whispers I’m here with the kind of presence she used to beg for in silence, used to reach for in the empty space beside her. And then he says I love you, not like a secret, not like a favour returned, but like it’s always been the most obvious thing in the world.

And then he yells, loud enough that the market stalls and fruit vendors and godsdamn fishmongers are all bearing witness, and someone shouts back good for you, and it is, isn’t it? It should be. It should be.

A helpless laugh breaks from her lips, and she moves on instinct, hands flying up to clap over his mouth as if she can press the moment back into something smaller, softer, safer. "Kai," she breathes again, a smile trembling like light off the water.

But her pulse is thundering. Her lungs feel tight. She’s trembling in his arms and not because she’s overwhelmed in the good kind of way. It’s the other kind. The kind that creeps in like a storm surge, cold and pulling and laced with rot.

Because she should have told him.

Back when they were sitting in the market. Back when she saw the way he looked at her. When they were joking and laughing and finding their footing again, like maybe the hurt hadn’t mattered. Like maybe they were still just Flora and Kaisel and everything in between had been a dream they could wake up from if they gave themselves just a bit more time.

But they hadn’t woken up. And she hadn’t told him.

And now he’s holding her like he’d die before letting go, like he’s already built a home out of her name, and she can’t—she can’t—keep this from him. Not now. Not after this. "I’ve been sleeping with Jack," she blurts, as her hands drop from his mouth to his cheeks, her fingers trembling against his skin. Her eyes are searching him already, wild and full of apology, her breath catching in her chest as if the truth has stolen the last of her air.

She’s cold, suddenly. Not because of the breeze or the shade or the bite of the sea. But because of what she’s just done—what she didn’t do—and what it all will mean.

I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff,
finding some peace in an honest love
Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Honey wherever you go, I know

He grins around the clamp of her hands, his adoration completely unfettered. He sticks his tongue out at her fingers, absolutely intending to claim another kiss worth savoring the moment she pulls them back in disgust. He doesn't even care that she doesn't say it back, he already knows. He'll take the shaken laugh, the nervous tremble, because this is something that ought to send a quiver up them. This is finally their moment. No Caly or Jack, and he's handling Koa, and the pain can be buried every day he does this again and again.

Her hands do move, but it's to make space for her to witness every drift of line that alters his face. Confusion sweeps in fast and first, like he's not certain he just understood the words she said properly, another language surely, with a different meaning than that. He shakes his head, attempting to clear the noise of it into something different. "O—kay?" It doesn't feel like it came from him. Some other random sound getting added to the mix of hers.

He staggers suddenly, unbalanced even though he hasn't moved. The world's tilting, although he doesn't remember stepping aboard her boat. They're at the market still, aren't they? He tries to catch himself, to protect her as he goes down, because his knees buckle beneath them. He leans back to keep her safe, backpack slumping behind him onto the walkway as he sinks between his legs, bent and angled on either side of him. He hasn't let her go yet, doesn't mean to, but his grip has lost all its strength now as he fights for a breath around the smell of her.

"What," he tries again, the sound so shaky and small he's not certain it gets airborne.

It only hits this hard, falling, when you've been up so high. It's why he'd always been yelled at when he climbed too far up in Stormbreak, a warning he didn't heed until he'd slipped and landed flat on his back, gasping for breath like a fish hauled out of a pond. This feels worse than that had.

As he had then though, he grasps for something to focus on, something to steady the panic that worked his chest too fast for any air to be recovered. She just said sleeping with. She didn't say back together with. She didn't say in love with. He blinks quickly, eyes darting back and forth over hers. "I thought—I thought he left for good? I thought..." She hadn't even wanted to come home because of him. "I thought he hurt you?" And how terrible now, for this to be the one equal footing he could find with Jack, a source of Flora's pain.

Kaisel

I'd give up half of forever, just to be with you

Flora

Flora watches the confusion bloom across Kaisel’s face, settling like stormclouds into the boyish lines she knows too well, turning his copper eyes wild and searching. There is no answer she can give him, no explanation that wouldn’t leave both of them bleeding. And yet she watches, helpless, as all the brightness drains from him, that silly grin and boundless joy evaporating until what remains is hollow and breaking and so, so quiet. It might be the most devastating thing she’s ever seen.

She doesn’t expect him to stagger. Doesn’t expect him to fall.

Her breath catches in her throat as he buckles beneath her, her arms tightening instinctively, but it’s too fast, and they’re hitting the ground before she can stop it. His backpack crumples against the walkway as he sinks, and she follows with him, the healing ring on her finger pulsing weakly in protest. Useless, trying to heal bruises when the real damage is so much deeper, but the heat is there against his shoulder just the same. A few people glance over—someone even calls out, offering to help—but Flora jerks her chin, her voice sharper than she means it to be as she waves them away. Her eyes dart from the stranger’s concern back to Kaisel’s face, where it feels as though everything is now collapsing in slow motion.

"I did, too," she whispers, her voice unsteady as her arms curl in protectively, fingers brushing against his shoulders where her hands have fallen away from his face. "It...started at the masquerade." The words taste ashen in her mouth, guilt welling up as her lashes flutter, cheeks blotched with colour not just from their descent but from the sheer shame of it all, from the selfishness and recklessness that had stolen the chance to do this right. She should have told him sooner. Should have stopped before it got this far. Should have said something before he kissed her. Before he said her name like a promise.

"It was just casual, at first," she says, almost inaudible. Her hands tremble, her body trembling with them. "But after I came back from the Cordillera with you, I saw him again and...he said he wanted to try again."

The tears come quickly now. They prick at her eyes like sea-salt in a wound, burning with every breath she takes. One slips free, carving a hot path down her cheek, and she doesn’t bother to wipe it away. Her gaze lifts slowly, almost fearfully, until her aqua eyes meet his. They shimmer with unspeakable sorrow and something dangerously close to regret, her lips trembling with emotion she can’t name, can’t contain. She wants to say a hundred things: that she didn’t mean to fall into old patterns, that she didn’t think he’d ever really want her like this, that maybe she was just afraid of happiness that felt too easy. But what she says, in a whisper so soft it barely escapes her lips, is: "I told him about you. I told him I was starting to fall in love with you, and that if he'd never said anything, you'd be the one I wanted to be with."

But Jack had said something, and now here they were, crumpled in the street.

I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff,
finding some peace in an honest love
Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Honey wherever you go, I know

"I was looking for you there," he objects with a broken sound. Not his voice, surely, something too ruined to be that. "I found Soh, I was asking her about your letters and what—what happened." Because for all the ways Flora had been upset at his distance, for leaving, she had done nothing to cross it either. She had written rage and called it done, then run right back to the person that hurt her most like that was the only place she could ever be comfortable.

The confusion has long since splintered into hurt, winding in deeper with each passing moment, each exchanged word. He has a general idea now of how Caly felt to her, and maybe that'd been part of her attempt, to turn the hurt he'd inflicted back around on him like a blade they'd just keep passing back and forth carelessly. That he didn't mean to doesn't make the edge cut any less.

He draws in a shaky breath, searching for some solid ground, but everything's still got a subtle spin. He looks for it amongst her, but the words she's saying, the ones that are sounding like goodbye wrapped careful and slow, they don't match all the grief that pulls and tugs at her like she doesn't want to actually hand them over to him. So nothing settles firm or steady. "So you won't give us a chance, but you'll give him even more?" It comes out low, taut with terror, not certain he wants the answer, not something so final when he can keep trying to find the glimmer of gold through all this mud.

The fear has well and truly settled now, because what does this mean? Has he finally lost her, despite all his attempts at the opposite? All his stupid, naïve beliefs that he would never, because he thought they had something too worth holding onto for either of them to ever let go.

He reaches up with a thumb to wipe the tear that starts to course down her cheek, even as his own have begun to gather in the corners of his eyes, too blurry now to see her properly. "Don't cry, Ro. It'll wash off all your product." He sighs softly, as if he has the breath to spare, but he's always hated to see her so sad.

He didn't think it could hurt worse than this, but the last thing she says feels like she's not content to wound him, she means to kill him. The slow personal way too, where she smothers him under her almost love like a pair of hands holding his airways, gradually watching all the fight suffocate out of him, the last light dim from his eyes. Why tell him any of this? Why offer explanations around flowers to clear air she means to never let him breathe again? Why allow him to laugh and hold and kiss her, just to tell him it's all only an almost? If this is guilt she needs him to bear, he will. He’ll carry every ounce until it breaks him, if it means she can feel light enough to actually love him back.

His hands tighten suddenly against her sides, like remembering their strength. “Then tell him something else. Tell him no.” His voice breaks but steadies again, desperate, unyielding. “I want us to try.”

Kaisel

I'd give up half of forever, just to be with you