Car Underwater [Emy]

Adrian Hexe Grimm

Goosebumps prickled on her skin as he took her hand in his. She was no longer sure if reaching the knife was a good idea. Alarms were ringing in the back of her mind, but this was what she had wanted, right? The closeness had been achieved, now what was that other thing she had been trying for?

"We should go back to shore," Adrian said, her usually strong singer's voice faltering under the sound of water and the night breeze, perhaps even unheard. It was the one thing that she could always pride herself in, the one thing that she was irrefutably good at. Faintly, even now, she could hear this combined voice whispering, All of those years of practice gone to waste after all. Her conjured mother and sister both were in dreadful agreement. The young lady's head swam with a distinct sense of failure piercing through a curtain of some strong primal emotion that she could not name.

Only on some slight level could Adrian recognize that she was afraid. Maybe she had been all along, without realizing it. But there was something else to that fear and failure, too, as the young man drew so close to her that she could see the whites of his eyes.

Her hammered painful, skipping a beat in its surprise as she heard his request. Kiss? Surely not! That was the combined voice again, outraged by the mere suggestion. Not some common drunk off the street! Adrian, when you bleed, you bleed blue. Remember your noble roots!

But his voice, it sounded so sincere and he, to be perfectly honest, seemed so pathetic a person that it was almost endearing. It was endearing. The sorriness of his state lent him an air of honesty.

It gave her pause, the moment indecently long and indecently thoughtful. Adrenaline that she did not even know was present was lacing her thoughts. Over the thoughts of what would Mother and Aurélie say? there was Adrian's voice at last.

People did not talk to her that way. They barely talked to her at all and that was passable but nothing more. She was not alone because of her sister and she was not lonely because in order to be lonely, a person had to first know what it was like to be with other people. That fleeting contact of playing alongside forgettable yet so unforgettable people in concerts was the equivalent to passing a vaguely familiar body on the street. When others were merely a blur in an already slowly paced life, how could they really be people?

It was nice being talked to, even if the person was a stranger. It was nice to not be an aristocrat and just treated like another random person. It was nice to not have an endless mountain of schedules and regulations to memorize. It was nice not to be waiting for the knife in the dark, because there was already one so clearly and utterly there in front of her -why would there be another? Fine, so there was a danger here. But it was nothing that she had not already encounter and in this, at least, she thought she could see the bounds.

The hammering in her heart sparked into a new flame of defiance. Adrian blinked, pained because the concept of loneliness had finally reached her in the middle of this lake amidst the darkness. But she was not alone now, and she would not say a word betraying her thoughts because the newness of it all humbled her into dazed awe.

So she stared at this young man, who stared back at her in the dark. Fear was at her back and a monster stood right before her. Not, as some might think, a monster of fairy tales. It was a monster as defined as a creature who destroyed the very world that she stood upon without a mere thought for her presence. It demolished without care, stripping away familiar things unthinkingly. That was monstrous.

Adrian blinked up at him and said, "Yes."

Adrian Hexe Grimm

Adrian had no idea what she had been expecting. As a practical non romantic -or so she liked to think of herself as- there was nothing in her list of expectations that had anything to do with kissing anybody, man or woman. For a moment, she felt childishly foolish for giving in to an improper impulse. Her noble upbringing was urgently pressing her to turn away but Adrian rather liked the idea of not and so stomped that urge as flat as possible.

She was suitably distracted, then, by soft lips on hers. Again, not knowing what to expect or how she was supposed to act, the young lady allowed him to take total control. It was what she was used to, after all. It was not even a matter of trust, simply habit. And altogether, coherent thoughts in her head ceased in the warmth of the most physical contact she had experienced since she was an infant. Adrian drank in every drop of it, kicking open the door to worlds that she had previously held herself away from.

Maybe her youth gave her away, then. Savoring the short sighted present, she could almost believe that things might become better. Both of the noble houses in her family, von Grimm and d'Aulnoy, were built on the fortunes of fairy tales intertwined with reality. It was only natural, then, that she gravitated towards romanticism. Even though just minutes before, she had thought herself so realistic and so earthly. Surely not so gullible as to take on a hopeless dream as a goal.

But, what had her reservations ever done for her? Yes, there were things that Adrian wanted, too. She just never had a chance to put them to words, barely even a chance to think of them. She was thinking of them now, and the future that she could have. A future that she might have already thrown away but which she also might be able to salvage. Surely, surely there could not be dead end unless she wandered there knowingly. And anyways, ppon her blood and those who had come before her, wasn't it true that she was supposed to lead and not follow?

Sometimes, Adrian thought hesitantly even though she felt like a traitor, it was okay to go first.

The kiss broke off and she shivered a bit as the warmth was removed. A wave of disappointment swept over her and combined with her contemplations, it made her very bold and very foolish and very not caring of what would happen next.

"Do it again," she said, mustering up all her strength to pitch her voice. It was almost an order.

Adrian Hexe Grimm

When the second kiss came, she let him have nearly every breath of air from her lungs. It was hard, too hard, to resist the sudden chemistry between them. The thought that she did not even know his name was a distant concern to her, just as the state of a single planet in Andromeda was to the entire Milky Way. She needed to see if this, this thing that had formed the first time would be as real the second time.

It was, oh, it was. The amount of things she knew that felt real and right at the same time were was so minuscule that Adrian could count them all on one hand and still have fingers left over to sign her death certificate. The feeling of filling spaces she did not even know existed was unbearable. If she had time to think, she might have agonized over what that left in regards to her sister. Families were supposed to be completed units but in hers, it seemed like so many parts had been lost.

She needed more. Desperate, the young lady followed his movements as he went deeper out into the lake. It was not possible, Adrian thought dizzily, that they could go much further anyways. They could not breathe water, after all. The faint remembrance reassured her of her safety.

As he pulled away from her, she clung on to him. Staring at his lips, she could accurately read them, even as she listened to his words. The movements mesmerized her. The next few steps would be unexpected and register as a mixture of suffocating and gently falling. It was more or less what she was already feeling. If it were not for his presence, Adrian did not think that she would be able to still stand. She was tired, dazed, and caught in the strange limbo between melancholic for not having noticed the extent of her unhappiness and hopefulness because now things could change.

What else was there to say between two strangers kissing in the middle of a lake at night? She had already said yes to him twice. In fairy tales, the third time always marked the end. The fiction could never survive far past that. It was as if that was one of the unspoken rules.

So for the third and final time, Adrian said, "Of course."

And waited for the moment when the magic would run out.