you know i will always request from you sooooo: jonalex, prompt 24 :3
24. Deep kisses where they have their hands tangled in each other’s hair to pull them closer.
Jonas slid down the wall until his side was pressed against Alex’s. One leg stretched out, the other bent at the knee. She had her arms wrapped around her own knees, chin resting on one of them. They were quiet, a companionable silence that swirled around them. He wasn’t Alex. He didn’t remember each go around or how many times they’d been in this house or how many times they’d seen Clarissa swan dive from the window or --
Well. All of it. He didn’t know; all he could remember were vague details and the ghosts of so many and Alex.
Every time he met her, over and over again, he knew her. The same night had become equal to years, even if he couldn’t remember it all. He didn’t know what her first words might have been or what dumb kid career she wanted as a kid, and she didn’t know who his first crush was on (it was definitely an actress of which he will not name) or any of his allergies, but he knew her.
He reached out, resting his hand on one of hers, awkward and bent. She startled at the touch, and he knew that she had been deep in thought. It took her a moment, for some of the tension in her shoulders to ease up. She looked at him. A poor attempt at a crooked smile pulled at her lips. He mirrored the look.
“There’s a way out,” Alex said.
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to find it.”
“You’re probably better equipped to do that than the collective group here.”
Somewhere in the house, distant voices could be heard, soft whisperings of confused panic.
“No, you and me, Jonas. It’s you and me.” She sounded so tired.
You and me.
Yeah, he could see that. They fought for each other. They kept trying to piece together the mystery and the end of it all.
But Jonas was worried. What if the end was really just that? The end for them. For all of them.
He licked his lips, trying to wet them, but his mouth had been dry for hours. It felt like sandpaper against more sandpaper.
“What did you want to do when you grew up?” The words tumbled out of him before he could stop himself.
“What.”
They stare at each other for a minute, and a heat shot up his neck and settled along his face. White hot embarrassment. That was what that was. Why did he do that? Was now really the time for some like weird bonding?
“A job, Alex. When you were a kid.”
She blinked slowly before a real smile stretched along her mouth. It was beautiful, really.
Wait.
That was not the right thing to think about your sister-- Not sister. Maybe? God, what timeline were they in? It was starting to pound at his temples, his brain attempting to escape from himself and from this situation.
And then she wrapped her fingers around his, because his hand was still on hers, warm and dry. It wasn’t quite holding hands, but maybe it was.
“Oh. Yeah. Um.” A nervous giggle escaped her before she shook her head, as if to clear to her thoughts from whatever had been bothering her earlier. “Doesn’t every kid want to be a vet? I’m pretty sure that was high up there in kindergarten.”
“You know, I think I went through that phase at some point.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, can’t see it.”
His brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”
“I just feel like you have terrible bedside manner. Animals would sense that right away,” she explained.
“You are a terrible judge of character. I am so good at bedside stuff.”
Her eyes widened for a moment before she laughed, real and genuine and directly aimed at him.
Why was he like this?
“Oh, are you? Maybe you’d have to prove me wrong.”
Jonas didn’t know what had happened to him in the brief second, but it was like his brain had cracked in half as easily as an eggshell. Because that-- this--
“Flirting?”
He meant to think it, he really did.
Alex flushed red, at odds with her blue hair. Her lips parted but only a squeak managed to come out.
He should go. He should get up. He should laugh this off as trauma bringing them closer together and the wires of it all getting screwed up. But man. Man. This was Alex, and she was it. She was the silence in the static. And he needed that comfort, he needed someone to be as confused and messed up as he was.
And if there was another cycle, they could get it right again. They could be what they were supposed to be.
Instead, he leaned in those few inches separating his cracked mouth from hers, and he kissed her. He kissed her with a yearning and desperation that a kid his age shouldn’t have even know. It was not a pretty thing, too hard, too fast, too Alex. Their teeth clashed more than their lips. A slide of tongue against her bottom lip that felt as dry as his own. Their hands so weirdly entangled.
She pulled back first, just the barest hint of a pant stealing her breath. “Bad bedside manner.”
He laughed this time, begging the ache in his eyes to stay where it was because he was not going to cry right now. “It was really bad,” he agreed.
She let his hand go, twisting herself until she was facing him. Her hands lifted to his face, cupping it for a second until they moved up, up, under his hand which fell into the dust on the floor. His hair feels wet with sweat, but she still dug her fingers in until her nails hit his scalp. And then she dragged him to her, half covering her body, pulling his hair until he met her lips again.
There was less teeth this time.