I Dreamed a Dance With You | Payton/Griffin [JB]

I Dreamed a Dance With You | Payton/Griffin [JB] Jun 5, 2021 20:39:49 GMT -5

Post by d4 Panda Scope [Gayton] on Jun 5, 2021 20:39:49 GMT -5

Bubby Caro

My, my love had been frozen
Deep blue, but you painted me golden

I hadn’t left District Four, yet. But, somehow, the salt infested air and its sand-stained smells had disappeared. For the first time in my life, the aroma was artificial and conditioned. I didn’t necessarily hate it, I just didn’t expect it. I didn’t know the air smelled differently in other places. But I was sitting, locked in a sleek grey room with peacekeepers on the other side of the door.

I felt like I had don’t something wrong.

The ocean was just outside this building, but somehow it felt like it was worlds away. The thought of a fish brushing against my leg as my father splashed me into the water felt foreign and created. The feeling of sand sifting itself up through my toes and somehow finding its way into my clothes, even though I had never sat down felt fantastical and authored. As though these memories were bedtime stories and not just a short walk away from where I sat now.

My parents came to see me. They cried, as did I. They didn’t want my sister to come, but she insisted and I’m glad she did. I couldn’t go on if I hadn’t been able to feel her in my arms one last time.

My mother is plagued with hope, affirming me that I can win. My sister has no choice but to believe her, and I’m sorry that they’ve already built these expectations that I can’t live up to. My father, smiles and agrees, but the tears swelling his eyes do little to hide the brokenness that matches mine. I’m small and weak. I’m soft and scared.

It’s that thought that sends me spiraling into a hyperventilation. I can’t survive and I know it. But I’m not ready to die.

After they calm me down, the peacekeepers make them leave. The final hugs go on forever, but they aren’t long enough. They can’t be.

It’s then that I feel the most alone. Sitting in the room, waiting for them to tell me it’s time to go. And when the door opens, I wipe my eyes as fast as I can and stand to be escorted. But it’s not a peacekeeper, it’s Alistair.

He stands there, looking more beautiful than I could ever remember him. We never spent much time inside so it’s odd to see his hair falling still and tame down his forehead instead of pirouetting through the wind. His beauty is astounding but I know his heart puts those piercing eyes to shame.

Are his eyes piercing? Or do they just see right through me. We don’t speak for several moments. Ripred, I hated him for what he did. But I love him much more aggressively that in the moment I decide I won’t spend these last few moments fighting. I don’t need him to answer for what he’d done. I don’t need to hear him say sorry. I just need him to be here, and for once he followed through.

So I run towards him and leap into his arms, feet off the floor and cry whispers into his ear, “I didn’t know if you would come?”

You said there was nothing in the world that could stop it
I had a bad feeling

I Dreamed a Dance With You | Payton/Griffin [JB] Jun 11, 2021 14:21:06 GMT -5

Post by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Jun 11, 2021 14:21:06 GMT -5

( ✰ )

Your mom's ring in your pocket
My picture in your wallet
Your heart was glass, I dropped it
Champagne problems

Alistair has always thought of their love as the sea so he should not have been surprised when it came to take. The sea always does. The waves hide treasures and shipwrecks, broken hearts and rejected proposals. It always came to take things away, and now it has come for the one person he cared about more than anything.

He cannot stop shaking. He feels cold, as if he’s taken a midnight swim, but the air is oppressively warm against his flushed skin as he leans against a wall, trying to steady his breaths. Why is he scared? Why is he afraid? His name wasn’t the one that rung from the stage. He couldn’t imagine how Bubby would feel. If his heart is jagged glass, what is Bubby’s? What has become of the heart Alistair so ruthlessly torn to shreds that day by the sea?

He retches, struggling for breath. His stomach churns. For once, he knows what unexperienced sailors mean by sea sickness. It’s a sea of feelings that churn around him, rocking him about. The love of his life that he left behind has been marked for death, and there is nothing Alistair can do about it. He could have volunteered, but what good would that do? Bubby would let the guilt drown him. In the end, that seems to be what this story will conclude with: a drowning, of love and of them both.

He draws away from the wall, albeit weakly. Alistair’s look towards the door at the end of the hallway, guarded by two Peacekeepers, is that of a man looking at the gallows.
His jaw sets itself.

The peacekeeper doesn’t question much – perhaps it’s the red on Alistair’s cheeks or his tear-muddled eyes, but he is let in quickly. And he wishes he hadn’t been. He wishes he was dragging out of here, kicking and screaming, because all of that would be better than facing Bubby.
Alistair is a coward. Bubby has always been the braver one. Because as the other rushes forth and puts his arms around him, saying a sentence his ears do not pick up, all Alistair can do is let loose the choked, ragged breath that had been held for too long in his throat. He feels the pinpricks of tears at the back of his throat as Bubby’s arms wrap tight. But he cannot feel their warmth. He has yet to be warm. It’s as cold as the murky, dark depths of a sea in his bones.

He drowns. “I’m sorry,” the words are a gasp for air as the tears burst forth. There’s no damming the flood. “Come back to me, okay? Come back to me and we’ll get married on the beach. It’ll be the two of us. We’ll say our vows to the wind.” Alistair looks up, and his lover is so beautiful. They could have been happy together. But that isn’t the story, and so all Alistair can croak out is: “come back to me so I can take your hand.”

The sea always comes to take, and with a vengeance. It always does.

You told your family for a reason
You couldn't keep it in
Your sister splashed out on the bottle
Now no one's celebrating