"I'd better go too." Paige whispered.
"You vanishing too? The night's still young." Jin said.
"No, I need sleep. Like I said. I'm-"
She stopped, I'm a massive insomniac, was what she wanted to say, instead the words choked in her mouth.
"What?" He asked.
"I'm just tired."
"Does this have to do with what happened to you during lunch?" He asked.
"No." Her spine forming for a second.
Jin looked through her to nothing.
"It's nothing bad okay? I just got food for us. Can't that be it?" She said.
Jin sighed. "It can, but shouldn't."
"What am I even supposed to say that?" She asked, suddenly bandaging a wound.
"That you know I'm here, in every way you need me." Jin said, it sounded supportive, but left new cuts.
"If that's the case…" she began, but ran out of words, she was flailing, lashing out with empty hands. Her fight could have just stopped there. No. She needed a weapon, ammo. Digging was required. "Then can I be there for you?"
She hadn't expected it to but that had thrown him for a loop, the verbal equivalent of a body slam.
"What are you asking?"
Shit, what was she asking?
"What are you hearing?" She asked.
What?
"Don't play with me." Jin growled.
"I'm not! I just…"
There was nothing but dead brain matter and sand. Beneath the sand was soil, freshly placed, rich, one wouldn't even need to dig…
"Were you even waiting for me?" She asked.
"What? Like you'd show up in a helicopter and a fucking army at your back?"
"Yes!"
"What?"
"I know it sounds ridiculous. I fucking know, but we sat together for the whole day and you never told me what happened, you just put up a normal face, you smiled and told jokes. But… I saw it Jin. What the fuck happened to your body. You know what… show me your back!"
She made to grab at his blazer and he nearly flung himself back, he could have hit her, flung her, swatted her like a fly. And you know what? It would've been understandable. She'd have it coming. She had a magic halo and knew it, so she just kept grabbing at him, locking their bodies together.
"I'm asking you to stop." Jin said retreating all the way out the alley and into the street.
"Why'd we have to wait for Drake Jin? Why won't you tell me anything, Jin!"
"Because I'm fucking scared! You're the only person with answers and you won't fucking give! I wanna know why you didn't save me if you knew where I was and could have saved me, when I never imagined you could!"
They were getting looks, so what? She just wanted to keep yelling. Muscles that couldn't possibly have existed were being used for the first time.
"But I don't remember this! Any of it. I was in bed!"
"You were saving my life! Look Paige."
In a fluid move that could not have been choreographed better with a lifetime of planning, he pulled both jacket and shirt off. The move revealed a scarred body, some were old, which she recognised, the rest were new and huge. His skin matched an orange whose skin proved too tight to peel, scars of a fingernail that'd tried to dig in only to try elsewhere.
Their eyes met and he nodded.
"Yeah, I should be dead. But you pulled me out. But over and over again you keep telling me it slipped your mind! How can saving my life slip your mind?"
She couldn't call him a liar, not with that! She should have believed him from the start. But how could she? What in the hell was she supposed to do?
"I don't know any of this. I don't know!"
The words just kept repeating as she stepped back, almost coming off the pavement before being locked up in a bear hug.
She was imprisoned, wiry arms dug into her skin like a forklift on a pillow. Did it hurt?
Yes?
The good outweighed the bad, he'd activated sensations long extinct. It was more than a familiar smell; it was a memory so deep and inset, it lit synopsises; sensations that echoed through her to the other side where more of him awaited just to do it again. It wasn't a gift, it was an entitlement! A godly mandate, her divine right. It was hers. It wasn't winning a world cup. It was breathing! Her means of continued existence. Like a head coming out of a deep-sea dive, she should have had it sooner!
She should have been angry, furious. If that was what holding her was, then he should've been doing it every moment of every second since she first saw him. No! Since he saw her! Her alarm clock should've been his skeletal frame crashing down on her. He'd no right to exist away from her.
He would get tired, eventually he'd have to stop, to let go. That was what broke her, nothing else.
He lifted her, catching her by surprise. What ever they were causing had stopped being a scene five acts ago.
"Come on, let's eat, we'll… I dunno, just do something I guess." He breathed in her ear.
"What, were we thinking?"
"Nothing here."
"But this is your spot."
"It's my first day back from hell, I get to eat fancy and you, rich girl with your stupidly thick wallet that's poking me like a pervert on a train are gonna pay."
He got a wet laugh back.
"You gonna put your shirt back on?"
"It'd mean letting go…"
"Good point, then let's wait, however long we think it'll take for a policeman to come."
"We could go back to the alley."
"You shut your stupid face. Plus I thought you said you'd been alone a month, so stop complaining."
"Haha! You got me. I can't beat you."
His laugh promised to snap her spine, but if spines were so important, humans would've had a spare.