Saying Yes: Part 4
by Siarade
See disclaimers in part one.
Strong language, etc. Standard warnings apply.
She was asleep by eight-thirty, and he let her have the window seat, which she had her head tipped towards. Sunlight cast its bright shadow over her face, glancing across the dark spot in a black reflection. Sixteen hours to go; the movie was some awful thing about ex-cons and casino robberies. Nathan felt restless again, and made the more reasonable decision to meditate than begin drinking.
He opened his eyes - opened them _closed_, so he could see the insides of his eyelids, and felt the lightness swim into his heart like a lily floating downstream. All of his blood changed colors in his veins; the world was very suddenly green, all over green, and alive like he had never seen it, so beautiful that when he reached down to touch the grass, he jolted that it was real.
"Bright Lady," he breathed, awe filling his words. Inhaling slowly, he let his chest expand as much as it could and gloried in the cool sweetness of the air, the absence of sand and grit in his mouth. The world was green with life, green everywhere, opening around him as an ocean of grass and trees, dotted mildly by pale pink flowers that blinked at him in the breeze, like innocent eyes.
He didn't want to close his eyes.
There was a rebuke somewhere in his mind for being barefoot, but even the soldier in him was softened by all that surrounded him. He walked, trees watching him from his left, waving hills from his right.
A breeze crept over his shoulders, curling loosely like a fat old cat. Behind his eyes he remembered frozen desert nights, huddled in the corner of his tent, eating dinners half made of dirt, and let the memory walk past him, like a single unknown face in a crowd of thousands.
"Jesus, Nate, before you know it you're going to put flowers in your hair and say that you'd like to teach the world to sing."
His mouth smiled as his eyes closed, and her hands came over his shoulders, so that when he opened his gaze again, she stood before him with her fingertips brushing his collarbone. He laughed.
Like his, her toes were bare in the grass. Her cutoff denim shorts had frayed white ends, and the pale purple tank top just proved her skin to be perfect like milk.
"So, cowboy," she said, soft voiced and throaty, "what took you so long?"
"Long? Oath, I got here before you did, and you know it."
"You gonna argue with me? Here?" The brow over her left eye arched up severely, but the glints in her irises were all laughter.
"No," he said, looking past her, at the trees, the grass extending for miles, the sapphire blue sky overhead. The wind touched him with light fingers, and Domino slipped her hand into his.
"C'mon."
Letting her lead, Nate stopped abruptly, his fingers tightening on hers as she glanced over her almost bare shoulder. A curl of black hair framed her cheekbone, and he tugged her back to him, closing the gap between them in one pull.
"I've wanted this for...for...for forever." He whispered against her mouth, closing his arms around her waist and kissing her for as long as he could.
Eventually, they pulled the smallest bit apart, and Domino, grinning, pressed her face to his chest, just under his collar. "You've got me for forever."
She pushed him down to his knees - and he let her - and then to his back, and she straddled him carelessly, so as he looked up she filled his sky, smiling and beautiful. He felt like throwing his arms around the whole world - like he _could_ throw his arms around the whole world - and so he did, throwing his arms around her and spinning her over so she was the one pinned, and he filled the sky for her.
I'm going to stay here forever, he thought.
Then, with the sky still clear solid blue, it began to rain. It sounded like galloping thunder, like a thousand feet hitting the ground at once, running. The rain was a roar.
Blood welled up in circles on his back, dripping down his skin in wild red rivers; he crouched down, his chest umbrellaing Dom as she gripped his shoulders and tucked her head under his chin.
"We've got to get out of this," she whispered, voice echoing between their bodies, but muffled by the pounding water around them. Slipping under his arm, she emerged into the wet and winced as it swung at her a hundred times in a second. "C'mon!" She ran, bare feet smacking up the puddles already collecting in the grass. A drop the size of a fist smacked Nate between the eyes, nearly knocking him back - she was widening the gap between them, and something in all that distance made him almost howl.
*Come ON* she screamed in his head, and even from as far back as he was he could see the blood beginning to stain through her shirt, marking her with red all across her arms and back.
"There's nowhere to go!" He shouted back, and she turned to look at him, stopping. The rain continued to beat her, and as he drew closer he realized it wasn't her blood dripping down her body, but her skin; peeling down her face, giving way to the caramel tone beneath; the black bled out of her hair, which even as he blinked seemed to grow longer...and auburn.
"Oath....ALIYA!"
The earth shuddered.
Blink. Blink. Blinkblink.
The plane bounced again, shaking in the air - and then a pull, as they began to climb out of the turbulence.
Domino, he saw in blurry recognition, was watching him with a frown, but she didn't say anything as he shook it off. He realized that his hands were crushing the armrests in their grip, and this round of so-called "meditation" had his heartrate racing. His throat hurt.
"Nate?" She said, voice low through the smooth humming of the plane.
It bothered him - he was _mediating_, not dreaming. The lack of control. Turning to look at Dom, for a second the sunlight made her hair almost brown and he swallowed back the horror. "Okay?"
Swallowing again, he nodded and took her hand in his. "Dreaming," he lied, wondering just _what_ that had been, where it had come from. She turned away, and he knew she'd sensed the untruth of his words - the link gave a sharp, short reverberation of pain.
"What's on now?" He asked, leaning back in his first-class seat and stretching out his legs. The link, again - he guilt ran through him and tightened the vice around his chest. Domino removed her hand from his.
"Dunno," she clipped, looking out the window. "Ma'am?" Her voice cut across him abruptly, stopping the flight attendant as she passed. "Scotch and soda, please?"
A nod of acceptance. "Would you like one too, sir?"
"Um, no."
He wanted to meditate again, and fix his weakness; he reached out and took her hand again; she jerked to look at him and met his eyes with a mutinous glare.
"Sorry."
"For what?" She wasn't quite snarling yet.
"For....lying. It wasn't a dream."
She nodded, letting him keep her hand.
"It was...I don't know. I feel -" the words made knots in his throat, and it _hurt_, inexplicably hurt in a wire spiral down his body.
"Scared," she finished on a half-whisper. Her eyes had softened. "S'okay, Nate. You don't have to tell me. Maybe someday, huh? But we're on vacation."
The skies hummed outside the window, and the quiet murmur of other passengers finally broke through to their hearing. "Fuck," she whispered, laughing.
"What?" He gave her fingers a short squeeze and implored her glance.
She faced him and met his two-tone gaze. She was even smiling, this tiny, perfect smile that stripped the weight away from him like it was old paint, easily removed. "We're actually starting to act like adults, you know. Pretty soon we'll start talking about our feelings and start joint checking accounts."
He chuckled, lifting her hand to his mouth, kissing her second to last finger.
"You okay?" she repeated.
"Yes."