Grimes Girl

Ruelle — Until We Go Down

[Surveying the grounds had seemed like a good option when he’d been inside, trying to escape the mixture of woeful and excitable chatter about the recent events over a mid-day meal (since no one had had any chance to have lunch), but now that he’s out here, it’s simply a mixture of uneventful and depressing, which isn’t much better, even for him. 

The damage to the Brink tower was substantial enough. There are roped off areas at the base of the tower, where portions of the rock walls had fallen and crashed to the ground. It’s a blessing no one had been standing underneath it. Also fortunately, the foundation seems to have remained unharmed, still standing sturdy, towering over the dusting crumble of it’s upper floors. 

Alex suspects it’s work that will be corrected within a few months, probably. Maybe less, depending on the reliability of the shipment of supplies they’ll need, or if they have enough in the storage lockers of the building’s old  basements. 

A young woman sits in a patch of sunlight, and as he strides around the area, gaze shifting this way and that in slow, pensive circles and drags, he spots her with a slight frown. In the serenity of the chaos, she’s out of place.

He stops a few steps away from her.] 

Everything alright? [he asks eventually.]  

She let him approach, quietly, silently. He reminded her of a large dog or wolf approaching something in the forest out of cautious curiosity. She had no idea who he was. His voice held no real familiarity when he spoke, though it was clear he was someone of ‘authority’. His stiff movements, the awkwardness of his tone - though he almost hides it well. 

His words are not what Logan expects at all. What a stupid question? How could she be alright after all of this? A bitter laugh escapes her lips and she has to take a breath to compose herself before she can look at him and reply.] No.

[J.R really just wants to hold her here. The moment she’s pulled in tight and against him, he doesn’t want to play any more games. Quite simply, he wants the comfort. To be touched, to hold. 

He likes it. Towering over her and it’d being a comfort rather than something to scare someone. The thought that he could be a source of comfort for Logan, when really, he’s the one who didn’t realise how much he needed this.

Logan looks up to him – wide-eyed and beautiful and mischievous. He wonders what she sees. It escapes him sometimes, her ‘delusion’, but in this moment she looks so at peace it’s not even a passing thought. The smile lifts her voice up and up above the trees, above the painful day to day. It’s enough that his own smile, the biggest grin he’s shown in years, stays firmly in place. He’s dumbstruck with happiness that he’s got no smart line to throw her way.

It’s almost a shame he has to stop smiling just to kiss her. Almost. He’ll live without a few more seconds of smiling.

There’s no need for games once her head’s leant against his chest. He doesn’t even need to hum in agreement or second guess himself. He leans in, a light kiss. Soft as the light smattering through the trees, the way Logan should be kissed: tenderly and wholeheartedly.]

In a way this - here in the gardens - Logan with her back to J.R, pressed up so close to him she was almost afraid to move incase she ruined it somehow. This, was one of two endings their paths could have taken. It was a form of mutually assured destruction Logan had never experienced but by far preferred. She was utterly and completely vulnerable to him like this, his face already wiped from her memory, but she knew it was him. There was no fear, no paranoia. Instead she became aware of totally and utterly at his mercy she was like this. 

J.R probably did not know it yet, they were still learning each other, but even before he tiled her head towards his and covered her mouth with his lips, he was well under her skin. He could have asked her to walk through fire and she would have. She was both enchanted and enamoured with him. Someone so course and rough as she on the outside, but who was by far a better and kinder person beneath. She wasn’t in love with him - yet. But she was definitely growing to love him a little more each day. Wondering and worrying about him, missing him when he was out of sight or just out of reach. 

But now, now he was right where she wanted him.

As usual he surprises her, the kiss is feather light, gentle, but with the promise of more. Logan finally lets go of the breath she had apparently been holding since she last spoke. It’s a small sound of relief. She feels like she has been stumbling around in the cold and has happened upon a warm watch of sunlight. And she wants more, she wants to bathe in it until she can feel it from the ends of her finger tips down to her very core. She wants to curl up in it, in J.R -is that even possible? To want to carve out a space for yourself within someone and call it home?

Logan has to breaks the kiss to move, turning against J.R’s body so she can face him. There is hardly any space between them, so much so she would have lost her balance and fallen if J.R wasn’t there for her to brace herself against.] 

“You took your damn time getting to the good part of this afternoon.” [Is the best she can come up with before she’s grabbing fistfuls of his shirt to pull him back to her.]