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It had been two hours of careful orbiting. Never getting too close, but always keeping an eye on each other. Occasionally reaching out for a surreptitious fleeting touch, something to remind each other that they were still there, that they were still themselves. That all of it was real. It’s easier when they’re alone. They know that’s real. Other people… maybe they’re just expecting them to forget, or to say something that doesn’t belong.
Weirdly, since getting off the ferry Jonas has had these brief moments of paranoia. Wondering if maybe they’re in the wrong timeline. Like someone’s going to tell him something happened and he won’t remember a word of it. It’s some kind of weird imposter syndrome. Like sometimes he isn’t fitting the mold just right. The same puzzle but a different printing, where it’s right but not right at the same time. He feels that way, but it hasn’t actually come up yet.
Regardless, at least he and Alex fit together.
Very well, actually.
After two hours of polite small talk about the speaker for the ceremony, the speech from the valedictorian, and - as always - the looming future plans question, Jonas is about done with the party. Alex even moreso. He’s had to redirect his path a couple times, seeing her start to zone out, or watching the frustrated set of her jaw, just so he could interrupt whatever it was that was affecting her. Sometimes she just needed a passing touch on the back of the shoulder. Other times, he’d pull the ol’ self-sacrifice and take one for the team with even more questions that not-so-subtly asked so who the fuck are you?
The murderer and the delinquent. Their parents must be so proud.
Finally the adults have shifted away. Another half hour and the sun is well down. Everyone left at the party is under 22. Someone legal bought the beer.
Things are harder when he’s drinking. They were already hard enough. Not touching her. When that’s all he ever wants to do. Kick her sneakers with his, lean an arm against hers... kiss her. They take what they can get. It’s fucked, but most of that is at home. He’ll carry that guilt in the back of his mind whenever he sees Grace with his dad. But Alex makes up for it. Having Alex.
He wants her for a finite forever. Until it ends.
That’s probably why he’s staring at her across the basement, zoned out a few feet from the ping pong table (the most legit game of beer pong he’s ever witnessed). He’s staring, a fuzz in his ears and at the corners of his vision, on his second drink as he watches her too wantingly to be done in public. But everyone else is drinking too, and they’re distracted, and he’s not.
Alex is picking up her freshly filled cup when she catches his eye, gives him that crooked smile.
He snaps back into himself, blinks, looks around for witnesses. No one, really.
Alex is already almost to him once he’s shifted his eyes back to her. Her foot kicks out at his sneaker. Closest thing to affection they can manage in public. She sways into his space a bit, though, like she wants more, and her eyes are a little glassy to match his. And then she just takes his hand.
To Jonas, hand-holding is a dead giveaway. But at the same time… It was how he could follow her. Following Alex. Trying not to die. Traipsing every path over and over again, and at some point she just grabbed his hand and… well. That was that. He doesn’t argue. Even if he sometimes wants to.
“How are you?” He asks, over the music.
She shrugs. Not one to lie. “Could use a breather.”
He glances around, and everything seems busy. “Not sure if I can-”
Alex is already tugging him along. Jonas, as always, follows.
She takes him through a door into a crappy bathroom, ditches her still fresh drink to open the door on the other side, and behind that is a kind of workshop. “No one ever comes back here,” she mentions, offhandedly.
Jonas ducks under cobwebs, ditching his own cup on an abandoned workbench with a wryly murmured, “...Wonder why.”
A door to the right hums. Alex slides it open with a little more force than should really be necessary, and pulls Jonas inside.
It’s a laundry room. A little dingy, lit with fluorescent tube lighting under yellowed acrylic. She drags the sliding door shut again, squeaking on its track. Sound is triply muffled. She grins.
“Alex…”
Her other hand reaches for his, fingers tangling together as she steps into his space - and then they’re kissing.
He breaks away. “I don’t know if we-” But God, he wants to.
“Hm?” She sounds too innocent, and pulls him toward her as she moves back, only letting go of him long enough to hop up on top of the dryer.
“The party’s still going on.”
“Yes, I’m aware.” There’s that crooked smile again, with a touch of mischief in it. “Your point?”
Jonas’s mouth opens to say something about it being a public event, and everyone being too aware of their relationship, but… it closes. Yeah, no, fuck it.
For her, he’ll do anything. Sometimes that meant carrying her body up too many goddamn stairs, eyes glowing red. Sometimes it meant ripping the radio out of his dash, or clumsily decoding morse code audio files in a panic, or breaking into the knife cabinet so she could cut up apple slices for an after school snack. And apparently, tonight, anything means making out in a laundry room. Not the worst sacrifice he’s made.