lost tapes.

four // AU - 'the other ending.'

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There was always an alternative route. This is just some of it.

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It doesn't look like what it is, the ring. Or, not quite.

She's fickle about jewellery, always fiddling with it too much or getting annoyed by chains and bands getting in the way. When she wears any, it's usually either because she's using it as a talisman — remembering something, someone, and most often him — or, it's a temporary fancy, and fleeting.

This is the former, she hopes, and not the latter.

So far, no one has so much as blinked at the band she's been wearing on her left hand for the past few days. Nora figures it's mostly got to do with the fact that it's simple, and all but unremarkable to the unknowing eye.

She's been toying with it, twirling it mindlessly while she thinks — thinks of him, and what it all means; what they're doing, and if it's right, or sane, or even vaguely doable.

And, it is.

Anyone who doesn't know, or who isn't her (or him), doesn't know that the stone is hidden on the inside, pressed between her warm skin and its golden home.

The only two people that know are them, and only them.

Now, and forever.

—

It's a strange new world, coming home to him, here.

He likes the ocean, so whenever he turns up, he somehow belongs. But Nora is still settling back into sharing a space again, and getting used to living alongside someone else.

It's just the two of them in it, this time. No one else knows what they're doing, they don't have an audience. There's no bandmates or roommates to pry and advise, no photographers or columnists lurking around corners with loose lips and all seeing eyes.

They haven't talked much about the edges of it all, what the shape of them must look like from the outside. But on nights like these, it hardly matters. He's here, Julian, and so is she. And this is life.

Their life, together again.

They go for a walk on the beach after dinner at an hour far past respectable, all the better to ensure the night is theirs alone, and so too the starry ocean, all inky black and dotted with shimmering starlight.

Julian keeps lighting cigarettes as they wander but only half finishing them, crushing the embers from the tips of them after only a breath or two. He wants his hands free, it seems to Nora, so that he can keep a safe hold of hers.

His hand that's not tangled with hers is stuffed into his pocket, his leather jacket out of place amongst the sand and the waves, and when Nora looks over at him, she thinks she'll make a jab about how silly a sight he is, all bravado and bare feet. But then she sees him, sees the look on his face — his furrowed brow an his bitten on lips — and the palm of his hand that is now free, and full.

'Sit?' He says, and then he drops down onto the sand before Nora can agree or disagree, or even begin to catch her lost breath. So, for a moment, he's down there all alone — Julian, on his knees on the sand, looking up at Nora with a smile and a soft look that he keeps just for her.

After a beat, Julian laughs, like he's just heard a punchline that Nora had missed. And in a way, that's true. But then she joins him, her body nestled amongst the sand and between his legs, and then his hand opens, and his heart does, too.

'You and me,' he says, like that's the answer to something. And, it is — in so many ways, it just is. And then he goes on, in the rambling way he tends to, and Nora realises that she wouldn't have it any other way.

'It's on the inside, just for you. The ruby, I mean. And I thought a lot about it, you know? Diamonds didn't seem right. And, I mean, I can change it if you don't like it — but the other week you were talking about your grandmother, and that ring she had, when you were a kid? So, I thought, yeah, that's it. And it makes sense too, you know? There's all this mythology about rubies, protection and peace, but then there's all this stuff about inner light, too? Like, they're lit from within? And you're like that, Nora. That's you.'

'Not always,' Nora says, thinking.

He looks sure and not, both at once. She's never quite seen his face make this shape before, and that's a feat in itself. Because before here, right now, Nora had thought that she'd seen all of him. But in a way, it makes sense that this is new. Because, this is new, and here might be the only place left they haven't been together, before.

'Now, though?' Julian waivers then, only just.

He'd known this wouldn't be simple, but then, he had never wanted it to be. Because, this was Nora. And so all he wanted was honesty, as well as everything and anything else that she might have left to give him.

'Yeah,' Nora smiles and nods then, and kisses him fleetingly on his worried lips. 'Yeah. Yes.'

Yes.

Julian takes a full breath, letting go of something he hadn't known he'd been holding on to, and then he rushes to slip the ring onto her finger before he steals her lips for his own.

'Yeah?'

'Yeah.'

Nora nods again, gives a nervous giggle, then tries not to cry. Julian does the same and kisses her in-between, more and again, for always.

'You and me,' he murmurs, buttery whispers against her smiling lips, her tear-streaked cheek, her throat, the tip of her nose, her hand with his ring on it. 'You and me.'

—

They're on borrowed time now, Nora knows. The beach is fleeting, and the city is waiting. And besides, it's not just rings that Julian has been buying.

There's a new home too, one for them to make together, a fresh start. And when they get there, everything will be different. The same, but more. And by then, people will know, and their little secret will be out.

But by then, they'll be one plus one, equals one.

And so for now they'll keep going for walks on the beach, hearts skipping in tune whenever they pass the spot where everything changed, the warm thrum of the ruby pressed against her finger a gentle reminder of what was still to come. And of what came before, too, and how they got to be here, together.

Together again, and this time, forever.

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