“I don't know what happens now,” Soren said quietly after a while. “I don't know how to fix any of this.”
“We don't have to fix it all tonight,” I told him, and I meant it completely. “We just have to start somewhere, and we already did that.”
“Start how?”
“Like this.” I shifted slightly so I could see his face without making him move away from me. His eyes were still wet and red from crying, his nose was running from the cold and the tears, and he looked more exhausted than anyone had a right to look. “Sitting here together. Talking instead of running. Not disappearing on each other again.”
“I'm really bad at not running away from shit.”
“I know you are.” I brushed my thumb across his cheekbone, wiping away a tear that had caught there, and watched his eyes flutter closed at the contact. “But you're here now, and that's what matters to me.”
He opened his eyes again and looked at me with an expression I couldn't fully read. It might have been gratitude, or grief, or relief, or all of those things tangled together in a way that didn't need words to make sense of.
“You always knew how to make me feel like I wasn't completely fucked up,” he said softly.
“You're not fucked up at all.”
“I'm a disaster.”
“You're a person who survived a disaster,” I corrected him, and I felt him exhale shakily against my chest. “That's completely different from being one.”
“Is it really?”
“Yeah.” I pulled him closer again and tucked his head back under my chin where it fit perfectly. I let my hand settle in his hair. “It is.”
The tears had stopped for both of us by then, leaving behind the kind of exhausted calm that always came after crying too hard for too long. My shoulders ached from the cold and fromholding him for so long, but I didn't move away. Didn't want to break this moment. The physical closeness felt necessary in a way I couldn't explain, like our bodies were doing the work our words couldn't quite manage yet.
“I used to come here sometimes,” Soren admitted quietly. “After you left for college and I was still stuck here. Just to sit in this spot and remember what it felt like when things were easier between us.”
“Did it help at all?”
“No.” He laughed, and the sound came out soft and bitter. “Just made me miss you even more than I already did.”
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine him sitting here alone in this clearing, staring at the same stars while carrying the weight of everything he couldn't tell me. The image hurt worse than anything he'd actually said tonight.
We sat in the quiet for a minute, and then Soren shifted against me and said, “You still do that thing where you crack your knuckles when you're thinking too hard?”
I blinked at the sudden change in direction. “What?”
“Your knuckles.” He nodded at my hands. “You've been doing it on and off for the past ten minutes. Used to drive Coach crazy during film sessions.”
I looked down and realized he was right. I'd been cracking them without even noticing. “Old habit.”
“Some things don't change.” He grinned up at me, and this time the expression actually reached his eyes. “You also still sit like you're about to get called for a shift. All tense and ready to move.”
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do. Look at your shoulders right now.”
I became immediately aware that my shoulders were, in fact, hiked up near my ears like I was bracing for contact. I forcedthem down and Soren laughed, the sound warmer than it had been all night.
“See? Told you. Captain Kincaid, always ready for the next play.”
“Shut up,” I said, but I was smiling despite myself. “You're one to talk. You're drumming on your knee right now.”
He glanced down at his hand, which was indeed tapping out some kind of rhythm against his leg. “Shit. You're right.”
“Some things don't change,” I repeated back at him, and he shoved my shoulder lightly with his.
