the rest of our lives would've fared well / elliot & eileen

When a moment is beautiful, it's beautiful.

Elliot's arm closes around her in the night, stars peeking through the haze of city lights and smoke. Their song plays as if it has no end, a chorus that could stretch into forever, lyrics she will fate herself to hum beneath her breath for the rest of their lives / for the rest of her life. They meet like a livewire and a fuel leak, like a flame that ignites with no purpose, no reason. Just the burning, and the aftermath. That's all this ever needs to be. Only the spark, and the flash, and the way Eileen feels as if she could do anything, everything, whenever their skin touches. She breathes her in like a drug / like her lungs have always been empty of her, and she is hungry.

And it's beautiful because it can be beautiful. A carcass in the woods, bones turning into a sanctuary, organs into flowers. It's all just another process of decay. This is theirs.

For Eileen, when a moment turns bleak —

it unravels in her.

She assumes there's no help for it, shrugs her shoulders at the notion that any of her mistakes could ever be solved. As if it's not her own two hands tearing into herself. Cheek cradled against the curve of Elliot's collarbone, their laughter fades until the melody swallows everything, and suddenly eighteen feels so terribly close. Her fist tightens around the fabric of a hoodie, nuzzles her fact against the warmth and the scent, white jasmine and whiskey. Fears that should have went unsaid.

"Will we ever be like this again?"

Eileen catches her reflection in a window, forces herself to stare at the image of them swaying together, and all she can think about is the inevitable parting. So much so that she pulls away by her own choice, blurts out the question she can't stop asking over and over in her mind. She walks over to the edge of the roof, wraps her arms around herself, and she stares down at the depths where she always flings herself. Nothing in her knows how to be afraid of the leap / of the fall.

"This time next year, I'll be graduated, too." Her tone is cool and low, not yet betraying the storm rising in her mind; in the dark where the bright Elliot Testino-Lee can never quite reach her. "You'll be knee deep in the shit at your new job, and I," she halts, feels the wind pick up and wonders how easy it would be just to let it take her. It has to be easier than the wondering. The waiting. It's like she's watching a bomb detonate, waiting for the blast to make impact. She looks down at the ash on her fingers / as if she didn't light the fuse.

"I don't know what I'll do. If I'll do anything."

Taking out another cigarette, she cups her hand around a lighter flame and sets it ablaze. She takes a puff, and watches as the cloudy tendrils reach for the sky as she exhales. It doesn't help. Part of her knows that it never will.

"I really cheated the system to have you," her throat tightens, heart races, "as my friend, you know? You deserved better." Her cowardice always wins out. "It was only a matter of time before life figured it out and took you away from me."