No Goodbyes

No Goodbyes 1/2

A request for Heppies

It was Bradley's idea to go off the grid after everything was said and done. After The Oscars,  when everything blew up, after he and Irina decided upon the inevitable. There was just too much; too much noise, too much confusion, too many outside forces. Too much and not enough of the peace they both desperately needed to figure things out.

There was a short window of time in between concerts and interviews and life happenings so he seized quickly upon it, offering up the chance well after he should have been home after the party, tie in hand, sitting in the grass barefoot, her head resting upon his knee, her body stretched out. 

"Didn't think you'd come back here."

She felt safe to say it, as if somehow the darkness protected her, protected them. There was a heaviness in her limbs now. The build up and spilling over of white-hot energy that had propelled her through their performance, the elation of actually winning an award, the breathless excitement of the parties...it had begun to slowly drain from her and in its place, a kind of weariness that hit deep. 

She hadn't bothered to change and the skirt of her dress fanned out around her, creating a cocoon. Maybe this was their cocoon, right now, in this place, and his hand went to her hair, stroking a pattern as he spoke.

"It's where I wanted to be."

Six words that spoke volumes. If had been months prior, she might have told him to go home, that he shouldn't be there,  expect to be hit with a barrage of guilt that he was with her before the sun had come up, instead of with his family. 

And as much as she hadn't asked him to make a choice or a decision, hadn't required of him some kind of concrete declaration, there he was, giving her one, just the same. Instead of questioning it, she grabbed at it, taking it for the gift it was, too tired, after months of mental and physical battle, to fight or ask questions.

It was where he wanted to be. 

"Go away with me," his fingers weaved into blonde and stayed there, his other hand resting on the curve of her shoulder. "We can just get the fuck away from all the noise and just...figure shit out."

Slowly, she sat up, moving in close. From how he dipped his chin, she knew he feared she'd say no, and she scooted so that their thighs pressed together. "How is that going to look?"

He smiled ruefully. "That's a rhetorical question." 

"Yeah. They all are, aren't they?" Sighing, she rested her head on his shoulder. "When?"

It was pointless to worry about the schematics of how they would manage to escape the talk and all the eyes on them, given she could already feel it beginning, already knew tongues were wagging. Pointless to question what was going on with Irina when he'd made clear they were over and what they had now was only for show.

The truth was, she'd go with him to the ends of the motherfucking earth if she thought it would do anything. 

But it had been three years of pushing back at feeling, at her feelings, three years spent ignoring the way her heart dropped into her fucking feet whenever he walked into a room. Wasted time, convincing herself that he was happy with the way things were, that she was, that they could both turn their backs to what was right in front of them.

She didn't ask what running away was going to accomplish or how it was going to prevent things from getting messy. Hell, she didn't even ask him if he had a plan because she already knew that there wasn't one.