-- wants and wishes; dorian.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

I'm sorry I disappeared. I made some mistakes and I had to step back and see the whole picture before I could start fixing anything. Things are finally falling back into some sort of order in my life, but at the same time, nothing I've done lately has made any sense to me without you. I'm home and you've been all I can think about since the day I left.
Tonight I'll be at the place where I made that first wish for you.

Elliot.
PS: I really don't feel like freezing my arse off tonight, so don't you dare stand me up, Dorian Wilde.

Elliot folded her arms over her chest and sighed. The tension on her face was evident as her heavy blue eyes turned toward the sky while somewhere off in the distance, the sun began it's descent behind the horizon.

She felt tired and worn out in every sense of the word. Exhaustion had become a personal plague and Elliot, dwarfed by the endless sky above and the vast, not to mention vacant, grounds around her, felt tiny, distressed and weary. A social creature by nature, the blonde did not fare well on her own, despite what she liked people to believe, and the last few months had been nothing short of lonely and exhausting; though she would never tell such a thing.

Sighing once more, the blonde tossed a curl over her shoulder and looked down to the hem of her dress, smoothing it out absentmindedly. The outfit itself was in Elliot's usual taste - short and sweet - and the blonde figured that if nothing else could bring Dorian back to her, there was always the temptation of a really great pair of legs; a trait which Elliot certainly possessed. Plus, she knew that he liked seeing her in purple.

It's strange, the things that people remember about each other after so long.

Finally forcing herself to look back at the school with stormy, reluctant eyes, the Almasian told herself to wait at least five more minutes before she gave in and sped things up herself. Waiting never suited to do anything for Elliot except add on another thick coat of stress. She was going to strangle Dorian whenever he decided to show up; if he ever decided to show up.

[Dorian Wilde]

Was it bad that Dorian was tempted to do exactly what Elliot had told him not to, and stand her up? It wasn't every day when Dorian came to visit Elliot and discover she had left, no note or explanation. It was every day he missed her, and over that long period of time he had learned to be patient, to hate, and to let go. Then... it wasn't every day you received a letter from the one you were preparing to miss for the rest of your life.

Somehow he approached Elliot from behind. He was casual, nothing like the crisp silk shirts he normally wore. Since Elliot left, he'd had no reason to dress up. Not that she'd been the reason before; Dorian always dressed nicely before her. He just didn't feel the drive to keep up appearances after she was gone. And now he was just accustomed to dressing this way.

"You haven't changed much." This was his greeting. No 'I missed you' or 'Why the fuck didn't you call?' or 'Nice to see you again'. Sure, he might have been thinking all these things, but the polite Dorian Wilde had had his patience thinned by this girl. He hadn't thought she'd return. He was just getting used the idea of never having her around again. He'd been even snarkier than usual; Ken gave up visiting him, and he stuck to his rooms. He still hadn't bothered to apologize to Jon, even though he knew his younger friend would forgive him in a heartbeat for kicking his ass. No one wanted to hang out with him when he was this surly.

"Purple suits you."

[Elliot is on the edge.]

Elliot tried not to jump at the sudden interruption of the heavy silence that had been keeping her company a second ago, and let out a breath she didn't even know she'd been holding. Several things became apparent to her at once, and none of it did anything to settle her distressed stomach. Firstly, he had actually shown up. He was actually going to give her a chance and a tiny flutter of hope started to swell in her chest. And then secondly she noticed the cold, though not all together unfamiliar, razor-sharp edge to his tone. The hope withered inside her and Elliot realized that perhaps Dorian had simply come to mock her, to tear down what little she had left and leave her bare.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, the pretty blonde suddenly felt incredibly disheartened because thirdly, she both realized and decided that if Dorian was really just here to make himself feel better and her worse, maybe he was in the right. She had done such a nasty thing in disappearing, and no one, especially not Dorian, who used to think the absolute world of her and treat her just the same, deserved that.

The weather tonight is cold with a heavy defeat and chance of heartbreak.

Turning slowly, her boots digging into the damp November ground, Elliot sucked in a deep breath before her eyes finally found Dorian's and the world slowed. She bit her lip and tucked a curl away from her strikingly sharp blue eyes before speaking.

"Thanks." Elliot had to swallow the lump in her throat again, and she was sure Dorian could hear how fragile she sounded, if he couldn't already see it.

What was next? What could possibly be said at this point? Nothing; there were no words for this. And yet, she was still going to try, and her next step would probably be the harshest.

"Dorian," his name tasted different than it once had, more like a swear than a praise. "I," the words were caught behind her lips, afraid. "I'm sorry."

[Dorian Wilde]

The silence after she spoke his name was heavy, and a thousand different combinations of words were strung together in his paranoid mind.

Dorian... it's over.
Dorian... I'm back!
Dorian, I left because of you and I realized I couldn't live without you so I came back.

'Dorian... I'm sorry.'

He hadn't been expecting it, and the pause that hung between them was pregnant with all the unspoken emotions he always kept bottled up. He wanted to yell at her. He wanted to hold her. He felt like she was pulling him in a million different directions, but at the same time he couldn't help but love the feel her her nails digging into his heart. She had him. Again. And he knew it was unhealthy when he admitted he wouldn't mind if she had him forever. This was abuse, he was sure, but it was worth it, just to see her again.

"I know," he replied at last, eyes downcast before he looked up to drink her in. She was gorgeous, and the fact that she doubted her hold over him made her all the more attractive. He stepped forward slowly, hesitantly. He reached toward her hand but stopped himself. He didn't know if he had the right to touch her. Had her trip severed them? Had everything changed? He couldn't feel it, not without her confirmation or rejection. For the first time since loving her, Dorian was confused. And it showed on his brow, on the set of his lips, the way his eyes would linger on her face and then dart to the side when she looked at him as though he'd been caught peeking at something he shouldn't.

"Are we still...?" He couldn't finish the sentence. She'd know what he meant anyway, he was sure. Even if he wasn't entirely certain himself.

Are we still together?
Are we still lovers?
Are we still... in love?

Dorian's dark eyes flicked up, and although he normally prided himself on being unreadable, he knew Elliot was the only person who could take one look at him and know what he was thinking. She'd always been able to open him up and read him like a book.

But for some reason when he looked at her like that, he felt as though she'd torn out some of the pages and wasn't planning on giving them back.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

Things with Dorian were difficult; 'it's complicated', she'd say when people tried to stick their nose into her business. 'But he's wonderful.'

Still, compared to everything else in Elliot's life, from her drinking problem to her family and school and everything else that lay in between, her relationship with Dorian seemed exceedingly simple. He needed her, or so she had convinced herself long ago, and while she had gone to Europe to chase away the ghosts of another romance entirely, this one had followed her as well. Of all Elliot's flirtations, past and present, Dorian was the safest chance. He would never hurt her, and more than anything that was what kept her coming back. He could protect her; shield her from everything dark and terrible, from the harrowing skeletons in her closet.

He knew she was sorry, how horrible she had felt about just disappearing. The thought hadn't occurred to her right away, but somewhere between the first pair of stolen shoes and that damned ring, far before her grief had her chain smoking but after she met Jacob, locked in her hotel room with four bottles of red wine, Elliot realized that she might have left behind someone who would actually miss her, who would feel the weight of her disappearance and carry it like a burden in the following days. Staring at herself in a glass of red wine, she would wonder; does he miss me? Is he regretting us? Does he think this was his fault?

One boy had seemed to effortlessly cover up her absence with another face and a shade much darker than blonde. Would Dorian be able to do the same? She had wondered deep intp the late nights where she slept alone in hostels and cheap hotels; have I ruined everything? Eiji had never been hers, and Europe had been about suppressing the way his words were seared into her memory and just how bright his eyes were in all her daydreams. And as Dorian looked at her here and now, as he reached for her hand only to pull back with hesitation, she could suddenly think of no one else but him.

"I don't know." Her voice was soft, buried deep her throat and laced with a unique timidity. Without thinking, Elliot reached out and took his hand, silently amazed at how his hands enveloped hers and how, despite the cold November wind and the goosebumps all over her tan legs, his skin was warm against hers. Her baby blues, still weighed down with a distant sense of despair, lingered on their hands for a beat before she looked up to met Dorian's gaze once more.

"I just need you in my life." She bit her lip, and for a powerful second, it looked as if she might cry. But Elliot had been brought to tears often enough lately that she was more than sick of it by now, and refused to even let her eyes water.

In some fashion or another, Elliot was sure that she had to have Dorian around if she was going to make it through this year. Draco had grown so surly and had long since abandoned her for Noah. Nate was great, but the two of them had enough issues that she could hardly afford to bring anymore into their friendship. Eiji had forgotten her, she was sure of it, and she needed someone to steady her, to help keep her afloat as she continued to dread such dangerous waters.

"I hate when you're upset with me, even though you have every right to be, and I feel like leaving just screwed everything up tenfold and I've been completely lost and absolutely mad for way too long and nothing makes any fucking sense anymore and I need something to work out right and I do really need you, Dorian," She paused, though only long enough for a nervous laugh, realizing that her mouth had ran away with itself and that maybe, she had admitted to much.

"Did I say I was sorry already?" She looked up at him cautiously, her head still tipped down and her hand hidden within his.

[Dorian Wilde]

Her words matched her actions, the uncertainty in her eyes and voice... even the temperature of her skin made her feel all the more vulnerable. And naturally Dorian wanted to pull her in close, that overprotective young man he was yelling at him to do so. But he still didn't know. Neither of them did. Were they supposed to start over? Pretend she'd never left and pick up where they left off, all smiles and embraces?

These thoughts were like a trainwreck. One came after another and crashed into each other in one giant collision of confusion and heartbreak. But when her eyes connected with his, and practically screamed at him they were so loud with their power, Dorian's breath caught and any logical thinking ceased. This pause in absolutely everything; breathing, thinking, existing... it was like a gust of fresh air baptizing him. Suddenly he could see clearly. But he wasn't sure he liked what he saw.

"You need me..." He repeated, voice low. And the silence that followed was all he needed to prepare himself for her flurry of words. Instinctively he began to protest when she assumed he was angry with her. Maybe he had been, but not now. He could never stay angry for long... not with her. But he quieted when she continued, and her conclusion rocked him. She needed him, and it wasn't a request or a demand. It was that same hesitant statement.

This defined Elliot. So insecure inside yet trying to appear solid and polished on the surface. He might not know where each and every one of her scars came from, but he knew they were there, and all he could do was accept them and try to help her forget. A short bark of a laugh escaped his lips despite himself, and he stepped in to wrap his other arm around her, nodding into her hair. Their hands, her cold one in his, only reminded him of how breakable she was, and he sighed quietly.

"You did," he said, the touch of humour making him feel a little lighter. But he still wasn't sure. The embrace didn't feel platonic. He still felt everything he had felt for her before, if not moreso now that the distance had sweetened his passion for her. But he made no move to change the small hug into anything else. Instead he stepped back to look at her.

He knew she needed him. He could see it. He could feel it. But needing and wanting was not the same thing, as Dorian knew all too well. She might be strong enough to recognize that she needed him, stability, a foundation. But was she smart enough to say yes to something that could save her, heal her, and support her? They both knew he was willing to be with her, at any cost. But Elliot had a habit of neglecting anything that didn't lead her down a self-destructive path, and Dorian was the personification of everything she had turned away from in the past.

He felt no finality, nothing definite, about the way she looked at him. He could read her, see that she still felt something for him. But she hadn't said it. She hadn't told him that she wanted him. All she needed to do was let him know, the tiniest inclination that she wanted Dorian Wilde back in her life, and he was hers. Yet he couldn't sense it. He couldn't tell if her need was a want.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

As Dorian stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her, Elliot felt herself let out a slow sigh of relief, her eyes falling closed as she buried her head in his chest for a second. She inhaled, taking in his familiar smell, and instinctively, her lips curled upwards into the tiny ghost of a smile against his sweatshirt. Elliot had an old hoodie of Dorian's, one that he had lent her some night in a past life, when they stayed up all night on the balcony under the stars, on one of those rare nights when she could be in the same house as Eiji and think nothing of him, where her eyes were drawn to the endless sky above them and to the boy besides her, and she was hardly tempted to look over her shoulder to see if the other boy was wandering past. When she had left Dorian a world behind her, the stupid coat had managed to somehow get packed with her things and Elliot had slept in that sweatshirt so many nights that it was growing threadbare, and yet it still smelled like him. Even on the nights where she had been glued to the bottle of Vodka all day and had somehow managed to bring herself to that comfortably numb place where she hated everything and everyone that existed behind her, she would still wake up the next morning in his sweater.

Elliot thought leaving would straighten things out. Being able to cut everyone off and make a clean break for the future had been the plan. And everything had worked out until she had to return home, back to this place with hardly enough money to afford food and less courage than she had started out with. Everything was tangled now, a damned train wreck and no one's fault but her own.

Looking up at Dorian, she bit her lip, the color draining from her face as she pinned his eyes with her own, her gaze unwavering. Somethings were laid out for him to see, some things were made easy for the boy to interpret; like how she had missed him, and how the regret of hurting him weighed on her still. Though there were things she still forced herself to hide, and some others that were just thinly veiled. Elliot had made the mistake of thinking she was a strong girl once, an independent soul of sorts, and now, standing here wrapped up like a present in a shiny dress complete with a bow, her eyes begging and her hands shaking, Elliot knew that she had never been that girl. She was broken and fragile and more than anything, completely alone; and terrified because of it. But that was the only way she knew how to be lately, and she just wasn't sure if she was looking to be saved, or just someone to finally push her over the edge into total depravity; comfortable endlessness.

She reached forward, touching his hand again as the thought of kissing him suddenly entered her mind and subsequently refused to leave it. If he questioned her now, if he turned her down or doubted her, Elliot was sure that she would just break a little more, but accept it all the same; she had never deserved him.

"So," and suddenly she was completely aware of what she wanted, what she needed, and the absolute very last thing she deserved. She needed his arms around her, she needed to hold his hand and see the way he used to look at her once more. She wanted him to kiss her like he used to before she had ruined everything, like it was the last time he would ever see her and she was the only thing in the world for him. She wanted to feel that way again even though it wasn't the least bit fair to either of them.

Her hands wouldn't stop shaking and words were still hard to come by as her voice remained barely above a whisper. "Could you please do what you do best, and sweep me off my feet?"

[Dorian Wilde]

"So..." he mimicked her, though not mockingly. It was more to humour her than anything else, and that slow smirk spread over his lips until it turned into one of his rare smiles. If he were being completely honest with himself, Elliot was the only person who'd ever seen him smile like this. He didn't even donate this smile to his best friends during the happiest of times. There was just something about Elliot that made his lips curl like this.

The way she looked at him, with longing, sucked him in. Her eyes were a vortex he couldn't and didn't want to escape, and her long lashes had the same pull as a siren's song. And those full, glossy lips wrapped around her words so elegantly...

"Certainly," he promised, and he covered her mouth with his own. He wanted this moment as much as she did, though for different reasons. He had missed her, terribly, and being with her now was like one of many dreams he'd had over the months she'd disappeared. But it wasn't a dream, and lips against lips let him know that reality had finally blessed him with something that belonged to the unconscious.

He didn't know how long this would last. He had no clue when she would pull away and tell him no. So he pretended it wouldn't happen, and crushed his lips over hers with all the built up passion he'd reserved just for her. He wanted her, with every fiber of his being he wanted her. And when the arm around her slid up her back and tangled in her long tresses, he knew he had her.

If only for now he had her. Of course he never wanted to have to let her go. She was like some sort of fallen angel. Possessor of unearthly beauty beyond anything he'd seen before, yet so flawed. She was like a diamond someone had taken bites out of.

The hand that was laced with hers dissentangled itself and gripped her waist, maybe less gently than he might have if this were a regular event. It wouldn't be enough to bruise; Dorian would never harm Elliot, that was something he planned on keeping forever so she would always know he would treat her right. His tongue traced the line of her lower lip, then he gave up on teasing. This was no time for games. He wanted her back and needed to show how much she meant to him, how much of himself he was willing to give.

And she had everything.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

Dorian's mouth crashed down on Elliot's, and almost immediately she felt the world around them wash away. The sound around them faded to white noise and in the depth of her stomach she could have sworn there were butterflies. Everything in that instant made sense, and for an instance, everything had meaning again.

Elliot was so good at making her self numb, desensitized to everything that surrounded and affected her, that it was an extraordinary moment when she could feel anything, let alone a time when she could still feel passionate about something. She just couldn't resist.

Raising her free hand, the one that wasn't curled around Dorian's side as if he was some sort of lifeline, Elliot concentrated heavily for one severe second before letting her eyes flutter open. Everything around them was suddenly still, silent in a way much different from the normal still of night. The leaves at their feet had stopped mid-bustle, and even the stars overhead had stopped twinkling. She had, in a burst of selfishness, stopped the flow of time in a meek hope of extending this, for just a little longer. The first flash of absolution, the very initial split-second flare up where everything was new and old at the same time, and she was sure she hadn't felt this way in a lifetime of months. There was hope in this prolonged second, something Elliot rarely had a grasp on, and she had known it wouldn't be too long before the rapture faded and she would retreat to her old, original self; albeit a bit happier version of her self.

Elliot stood up on her tiptoes, bring her mouth to Dorian's once more and letting time begin again. She wouldn't have been able to hold the moment any longer if she had tried, and even with Dorian's electrifying kiss, she felt drained. She raked a hand through his hair, her teeth toying with his bottom lip momentarily before she finally pulled away, the need for air overwhelming her.

"I missed you." She sounded breathless as her forehead rested against his. Their noses were touching as she smiled radiantly at him, unable to quell the expression at any cost. Maybe she had finally done something right.

[Dorian Wilde]

_{(I'm so sorry! I flipped out last night when my Internets cut out. Rogers fckn SUCKS! This was the fourth time this week!)}

When she stopped, Dorian feared the worst. A soft kiss pressed against her mouth one, twice, before she spoke, and when she did, his eyes finally opened. He hadn't noticed anything during their kiss. He was so concentrated on Elliot, how wonderful she felt in his arms, how impossible this moment would have seemed to him yesterday. If anyone had told him he would be kissing Elliot like this again, he would have decked them to pay for their cruelty. This was beyond cruel - this was torture. But it was the hottest torture and Dorian was ready to endure.

"Me too," he choked, his voice not having time to adjust to this pained emotion in his throat. He pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek, keeping his skin on hers, forehead sliding against hers. He brought both his hands to cup either side of her face and he pulled back ever so slightly so he could look into her eyes. Was this it now? Did she have what she needed, and would she leave? Had it just been that kiss that would sustain her?

As horrible as it left him feeling, that she would only need him for that, there was also a part of him that hoped he'd made her life a little easier to live. The rest of him wanted to covet her away, hide her from the world and make her his forever, and the way his fingers curled around her jaw and behind her ear could reveal that.

"You're beautiful," Dorian murmured, leaning in to whisper the words into her hair, "you know that right?" His one hand drifted lower and he pressed his hand over her heart. It might be a little strange, but right now he didn't care. He had to know, and there were some things that just couldn't lie to you. Eyes and lips could be so deceiving... the flutter of Elliot's heart would give him what he longed for.

Kissing a line back to her lips, slowly, tenderly, nose skimming over her cheek and inhaling her intoxicating scent, Dorian finally connected their lips. His hand was listening intently to her pulse, his other coming down by her neck should he miss to beat in her chest.

This kiss, it was the one she had been hoping for the moment she decided she wanted it. Dorian kissed her as though it would be the last time, and although he felt she was weakened, for a reason unknown to him, he held enough passion to make up for that she lacked. His mouth found a rythm and broke from it frequently, lips speeding up and tongue slowing down. He kissed her so fiercely because he didn't know when the next time would be when he could kiss her like this again. If ever.

And that not-knowing was what scared him. It frightened him into this frenzy. Elliot's uncertainty was rubbing off on him, because Dorian was the only one with the need to be uncertain. Elliot would always have Dorian.

And Dorian wouldn't be so lucky.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

Beautiful; the word had been offered to her so many times, whispered in the still dark of bedrooms and back alleys, thrown desperately like a fish hook at her over the deafening music of bars and clubs. Many different voices and faces and most of them as empty and hollow as her own tarnished blue eyes. Now, Elliot could recall three moments in her entire, minuscule stretch of living so far, where the word 'beautiful' had met her ears, and it had been real. Of the thousand times in Elliot's life where the compliment had passed through, all eventually wavered and fell short, save for the moment when her father had looked down on his youngest daughter, at his baby girl and with watering eyes he told her about her mother, and then, a bit of light had flooded into his eyes as he picked up his daughter that looked so much like the lost love his life, and told her how beautiful she was. Every single other moment paled in comparison to Eiji's whispered confession, that night with her back pressed up against the shower and his hands grasping at her, claiming, marking her, for the very last time.

And as soon as the words left Dorian's mouth, Elliot knew that he would be able to feel her heart flutter underneath his hand and her breath stopped somewhere in her throat as she closed her eyes against him. This moment would stay with her long after they had parted, for now and eventually forever; it would manage to both haunt and comfort her. She knew that Dorian wanted to give her the world, she knew all to well of how he wanted to save and protect her, to shield her from the world and her own self. She knew everything he told her was true and poignant and honest. He loved her, and instantly she hated herself for letting him. He had wasted so much on her, and she couldn't help but feel guilt; she would never be able to deserve him.

"So you keep telling me." The fragile blonde murmured into his chest, her eyes fluttering open as his lips traced a feather-light line across her cheekbone. Their lips met and her anxiety faded almost immediately. She stood up on her tiptoes again, her index finger brushing against the underside of his jaw as she matched his rhythm, letting him sap up what was left of her energy and erase everything that plagued her for just another minute. Her other hand was tangled in his shirt, gripping his side as if without him, she might sink into the ground beneath them and disappear, as if he could somehow keep her alive and afloat.

She kissed him deeper now, wrapping her arms around his neck as a tear escaped her baby blues, despite the way she had been squeezing her eyes shut so desperately; she was such a horrible waste of a person.

[Dorian Wilde]

He tried not to dwell on the sadness he glimpsed, and he tried not to think of it as remorse. Dorian Wilde was a proud boy; confident, cocky even at times. But when Elliot was near she rendered his pride obsolete and he was a selfless young man. And he couldn't help but second-guess himself. But, like Elliot, he chose to be selfish. He ignored it. He wanted so desperately to believe that she felt no regret in returning to him. He didn't want her to feel as though she never should have sent that letter.

He fell into the kiss she deepened. His arms wrapped around her waist and lifted her, and he couldn't help but smile a little. He could be her platform shoes and undo what heredity'd done to her so she wouldn't have to strain to look into his eyes. Her cool skin made him want to be her winter coat, buttoned and zipped straight to throat with the collar up so she wouldn't catch a cold.

I can save you.

The thought came unbidden to his head, and the tragic hero within him embraced it even tighter than the way he embraced Elliot now. There was something so attractive about a lost cause, but he was determined to find her before that happened.

He wanted to tell her she was beautiful again, but he didn't want to cheapen it. He wanted to beg her to let him be with her, but he couldn't stoop to his knees for someone who could shred his heart simply by denying him. Dorian wanted to take her far from the cynics in this town and cut their bodies free from the tethers of this scene.

They could start over. They could run away together, because Elliot would warm to that idea. They could change and give themselves new names. Identities erased. It was foolish for him to be so ready to give up everything he was just for one girl. One girl who wasn't even sure what she wanted. But he was, and he couldn't not be. He was play dough in Elliot's capable hands and the artist that she was could shape him into any man she wanted him to be, so long as it was her hands transforming him.

Dorian had never really appreciated art until now.


_{{Inspired by Brand New Colony by the Postal Service}}

[Elliot is on the edge.]

Elliot let out a little gasp of surprise as Dorian lifted her, and as he smiled, she did too. Their expressions melted together in a kiss as she clung tighter to him, her knees bending as her feet left the ground. She sighed against him, wanting to stay here forever. There were no fierce blue eyes haunting here, no broken promises or memory of him here at all. It was just her, bare and stripped and heartwrenchingly lovely, and someone who loved her for all her faults and cracks and vices, all her imperfections.

She could have left again. To leave this small town and make a run for it with him, instead of staying here, shackled to the ghost of a boy who could never be hers as she slowly destroyed herself from the inside out. Dorian brought out a radiance in Elliot that was so rare and holy that she was at risk to fall in love with her own smile.

The blonde was so set on punishing herself, and only Dorian could make her question the practice. She was so determined to put herself through hell just because she was so sure she deserved it on some level, and Dorian always made her so painfully aware of it that she wanted to let him scoop her up and save her, to turn her into the girl that he wanted and needed, to let herself become whole and invincible and hopeful with him, somehow.

She didn't regret him, letting him into her life with his promises and convictions, Dorian with his noble intentions and sweet talk was one of the few things she had done right, simply because he would never do her wrong. The only thing she had remorse about, was the volume of his affection for her. Elliot liked Dorian, so much that it threatened to tear her at times, leaving her between a rock and a razor and unsure of which one to face. Yet, he was so enamored with her, enough that she knew how much it would pain him to turn back now, how it could break him to be without her, that she wished they had never met.

He wanted to save her so badly, and the only way Elliot could ever repay the motion was to wish that he could forget her, because she was no good. Nothing but bad news and trouble, Elliot was a total mess and she wondered why Dorian couldn't see it. And as much as she wanted him to wise up, to do what he should have and turned her away into the gutter where she most certainly belonged, still she clung tighter. She sighed against him, her mouth finally leaving his so she could bury her face against his neck, her arms still wrapped around him tightly.

"Why did you show up?"
The question surprised even herself, and suddenly Elliot found herself wondering why he had come back to her at all. He should have hated her after she left, after she turned tail and ran away so selfishly. Why hadn't he moved on?

[Dorian Wilde]

Taken aback by her question, Dorian carefully set her back down on her feet and looked away. What was the answer to it, he wondered? Truthfully he came to see if it was true, that Elliot Davis was back. But that wasn't nearly all of it. He had come to test himself, and to remind himself how hopeless they were. But instead he found hope, and instead he found that he possessed no ill will toward her, and that she was in his very veins.

"I came to... make sure you were real," He decided on at last, turning back to look at her, "when you vanished, I couldn't even be sure you were real. You're like a dream, you know," he teased harmlessly, "so wonderful yet so difficult to hold onto. But I had to try. You don't just let go of a your dreams, Elliot."

Why did he sound like a struggling stay-at-home mom convincing her daughter to 'follow her heart'? He smirked at the way he sounded even to himself. Everything was so dramatic when everything concerned Elliot. Sometimes they took themselves too seriously, and when he finally recognized this all he wanted to do was laugh and hold her. But then his mind would drift to that night when they lay under the stars, Elliot in his lap, just talking. Their first date, when they'd discovered who the other was, yet were so oblivious to what they'd become.

The smirk turned into another smile, and he kissed her on the mouth once more before pulling away, lacing his fingers through hers.

"Come on, dream girl. You're freezing. Let's go inside," he suggested, taking the first step toward the school. He'd offer to bring her home if he weren't so aware of the implications behind the question, but he was so intent on not scaring her away, to convince her in every way that he was perfect for her. He knew he wasn't the only boy striving to win her heart; he never was. But what he was most concerned about was not the other boys who wanted her, it was the other boys she wanted. Because with Elliot he'd never been sure if it was just him. There was the time when she'd been seeing Kenneth and him, and he'd never been certain which boy she liked more. And then there was Eiji, the boy whose passing glances he'd pretended not to see. And even more painfully, the boy who Elliot would avoid so fiercely while with Dorian, that Dorian would grow envious of Eiji solely because of the power behind Elliot's adamance.

Shaking this off and offering her a vying expression, Dorian stroked a thumb over her knuckles before he stared down at their intertwined hands. There he found meaning and comfort and assurance. There he found hope.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

"I shouldn't have left." His answer had again made her aware of the guilt that festered in the very bottom of her stomach, the kind that burned at her all day and chased away any chance of a real nights sleep. Her eyes fell to the ground beneath them and she shivered, feeling morose for a second. "It was really fucking selfish of me."

The blonde looked up finally, raising her chin up just in time to meet Dorian's eyes before he dipped his head down to kiss her, catching her frown just in time to turn it into a grin, and as they broke apart, the stars had flooded back into her eyes and there was no trace of grief left. She let him take her hand, smiling as his skin brought heat to hers. They walked along in silence for a moment, her steps trailing just half a second behind his as they headed toward the school, which was, in all truth and actuality, the very last place she wanted to go.

Elliot squeezed his hand absentmindedly, toying with something for a moment as they continued to head back to the school. She wasn't ready to be left alone just yet, to be forced to sit in her Dorm and go over this night in her mind for hours, to analyze every moment and wonder if it had been the right thing or the wrong. She couldn't go through that just yet, and more than anything, she wanted to be with Dorian for just a little longer. She wanted to stay the girl he brought out in her, she wanted to prolong his spell just a little before her carriage became a pumpkin and she was left in rags.

"Dorian," His name sounded sweet again, and she paused to lick her lips. "Don't leave yet?"

She looked up at him with those arresting blue eyes, her pout as flawless as ever as she asked him to stay with her for a little while longer. Elliot wasn't ready to get dropped off at the door and left to her own thoughts and devices just yet. If they could just sit in the Antechamber and talk a little longer, or walk around the castle once, she would be a little more at ease. What she really needed was a glass of wine and some company, but she dare not suggest it for what it might have implied.