Unpredictable - (tristan evans)

I'm Just A Moment

An empty street, deserted, silent trees offering no help as a strangled scream stuck in her throat. She reached out and grabbed hold of his shoulders, shaking as hard as she dared, but even her best effort elicited no response. Shaking, she forced herself to slow down, taking a deep drag on the choking air before leaning closer. Her tentative fingertips brushed worn leather, whispered over his cool skin and came to rest on his throat, just below the hard edge of his jaw. For a few tense seconds her heartbeat blocked out every other noise but as she let herself relax, she realised she could feel a steady rhythm beneath her careful fingers. Faint but definite, his pulse seemed unnaturally slow, his skin still ice-cold despite her clammy hands.

What the fuck are you doing?

The little voice pricked her thoughts, drawing beads of blood.

Do you even know how long he’ll be out for? You idiot, you don’t have a fucking clue where you are, how the hell are you going to get home?

She tried to dodge the blows but they kept coming, and the last one cut like a blade before fading to a sharp sting.

What if he never wakes up?

She sat still for a while, hands balled into tight fists, allowing herself the small comfort of knowing he still breathed. She knew. She had known the moment she laid eyes on him. He needed her, just as much as she needed him. And she wasn’t going to let him go before she’d even had the chance to set things straight between them.

But even as she sat there, secure in her inevitable fate, in a sudden flash of alarm she suddenly noticed how late it was. The sky was clear, calm, but rapidly seeping blackness told truths no pretences could cover up. She jumped up, flinching when the bedsprings creaked loudly but shook herself hard, searching for a light. She didn’t really feel like waiting in pitch black and, if she was honest, the idea scared her a little. Blundering about in the small, yet daunting room, her outstretched fingers fumbled over a hardly discernible light switch, barely a bump in the wall, and with a sigh of relief flipped it on.

A tiny light flickered, its twin hanging lifeless from a second socket just above her head, and alone, it bravely fought back oncoming darkness. She shivered slightly and went to the open door, something nudging her foot as she passed by. Looking down, she bent and picked up the empty plastic bottle that had rolled from beneath the bed, one lone pill rattling forlornly against the sides. Drugs, always drugs, the only way to shut everything out. She glanced back at him, then at the bottle in her hand, and shook her head sadly before casting one last glance around the shadowy street. The broken lock flashed silver as it swung back and forth, back and forth.

“So,” she sounded hesitant, standing in the middle of the room. She made her lips move, partly to hear the simple comfort of a human voice, partly to keep that small, dangerous voice away, partly to ward off the sense that she wasn’t alone, save the limp, leather-clad figure in the corner.

“Um, well then…”

Her voice died away, wandering eyes finding something that sparked curiosity. Curiosity killed the cat, she reminded herself, and yet she found herself moving towards it, picking it up with careful hands. Staring at it as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. A dusty photo frame, two faces smiling from behind endless years, the cracked glass and small splinters telling tales of mistreatment over time. Her eyes were drawn to the smaller of the two, and for a split second she thought she knew him, confusion creasing her brow as she looked closer, though the light was still too dim to make it out properly. Closer, her nose almost touching the dusty surface, closer, closer.

And then the bedsprings creaked behind her, abruptly yanking her from her stupor. She spun, the picture falling from her fingers and clattering on the shaky desk devoid of anything else but the empty, half-empty, nearly full bottles of fiery blankness.

And his blue eyes were staring right at her.

“What the fuck-” he roughly shook himself awake, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and finding his unsteady feet, “-are you doing here?”

She stood her ground, resisting the urge to push the photo frame behind a bottle and out of sight. He said no more, simply stared at her with an unfathomable expression in his shaded eyes. She opened her mouth to try and twist her thoughts into words but no sound came, the night outside the thin walls enfolding black and crawling nightmares leaving smears of blood along shadowed tarmac.

He rubbed away the last of the heaviness of drug-induced sleep, taking a shaky but somehow still menacing step towards her as she backed away. Closer, she could feel the vibrations of his heavy boots with each step, a faltering rhythm that froze fear in its place and left it there, suspended for further torture. And then there was no more space behind her, the cold wall digging into her back and sending icy shivers along every nerve ending as she pressed herself against it in vain, wishing herself gone.

He was barely a whisper away but still he did not stop, long arms stretching out as he carefully placed his hands against the wall either side of her head, leaning in, trapping her. His lips moved, the words dragged painfully from his mouth as though he wished he could take them back, fighting himself.

“I thought I told you to stay away”

She didn’t reply, shrugging herself off the wall and standing up straight as she calmly held his gaze. Her hands came up, hesitantly touching his wrists and then holding on tight, keeping him from moving away and leaving her one step behind again. She thought she saw a flicker of surprise light his eyes but she blinked, and it was gone, leaving her as unsure as she had been in the beginning.

He was closer now, she could count each individual eyelash, saw the flecks of deep navy that tempered clear blue. She watched as he blinked, muddled by their sudden proximity, and the muscles of his throat constricted as he swallowed, tendons in his hands standing out in sharp, raised lines. She reached out, fingers trembling as they hovered inches from his skin, and his eyes never left hers as they smoothed hushed lullabies across his skin, her tenderness leaving him with the feeling of a searing burn. Closer again, and agonised confessions fell from her lips.

“I can’t”

And before they could make sense of the world frozen in time around them, their lips met, his limp hands sliding down the wall until they rested lightly on her shoulders. She felt him shudder against her as his carefully constructed defences crumbled to dust, all the tension melting away, giving in to her as he forgot everything in the thrill of her embrace. Who he was, what he was, his name itself. She could taste him, inhaling the scent of him as though she had not truly breathed in years, had not truly lived until this moment. And as they delved deeper, she sensed the numbing drugs on his tongue, breathed the curl of ghostly smoke from his lips, heard the hard edge of danger that was the soundtrack to his life. His piercing snagged her skin, his teeth catching her lip and drawing her to him as her hands wound themselves into his hair, arching into his body as he held her.

Pulling back a fraction, he realised, with a twinge of incredulity, that he finally felt complete. There, with her in his arms, he couldn’t remember what he had been so terrified of in the first place. Even the little voice had ceased to harm him, and his wounds felt-not quite healed, but together.

“Oh, Scarlett”

She felt a shiver trace down her spine as he breathed her name, defeat in his tone but unseeing warmth in his eyes. She looked up at him, and in that single moment he could see that she understood, that no more words were needed to express what they both already knew.

It was his hand this time, that found hers, clinging on with all the burning desperation of clinging onto his life, his soul. And just for a moment, that moment, they felt safe.

“We shouldn’t…”

“We already have-”

And then her denials were cut off as his mouth descended on hers again, careful and dangerous, burning and ice-cold.

They were together.

And then it was all over.

just a big big thank you to everyone who continues to read and vote, comments are much appreciated yes hi

BUT YEAH BASICALLY BYE UNTIL NEXT CHAPTER X