Clockwork

The television was a distraction. Seeing twenty two polyester clad men spanning in ages from eighteen to thirty-something running about on a slightly off-colour strip of grass was a distraction. She couldn’t bring herself to look and really comprehend what was going on, though. She knew, had she been bothered enough to get up, that her Muggle mobile telephone would be displaying the games that were in progress or only just beginning to take place. She was sure that with a few taps of the buttons on the controls they’d be able to find a game going on between some of the Eastern European teams. She wasn’t too keen on football, she was discovering, or perhaps it was just because it was Trent’s choice of viewing. Millie didn’t know. She just focused on her cigarette, on the smouldering end of the cylinder of tobacco and Merlin only knew what else. She didn’t know whether she was spending more time smoking it or more time observing the way it burnt. It allowed her brain to explore different avenues, all in regards to the cigarette. It allowed her to escape the aching present. Or it did, until Trent overstepped the boundary and took it away from her.

Millie grappled for the cigarette but was forced to watch in dismay as it was stubbed out in the ash tray. Millie opened her mouth to say something but once again word failed her and she let her mouth fall to a close. Her hands fell into her lap and she turned her head away, forcing herself to not look at Trent. Her fingers twitched in her lap, reminding her of the desire to be close to him, to feel the soft, weather-worn skin under the pads of her fingers. She wouldn’t allow herself now. The embarrassment was too much. Her cheeks had long since flushed an ugly shade of red, displaying for him to see her dismay at his rejection of her. The tears were still on the brink, waiting, ready at a moment’s notice to fall. She screwed her hands together, biting back the fuck you that was on the tip of her tongue at his weak explanation as to his forwardness. Millie merely snorted in response, making her displeasure known but not quite willing to throw everything into the gutter wrapped in a glittering expletive. She hated him, in that moment, more than she had ever hated him. She didn’t know whether she wanted to hug him or strangle him - probably a mixture of both.

The brief hold of Trent’s hand over hers made Millie’s skin burst aflame with an unfamiliar heat. She blinked and looked up at him, her eyes wide with confusion and hurt that only intensified when he removed his hand. Millie’s eyes fell to her own hands, the feel of his burnt into her skin. Millie sighed heavily, reaching up to run her fingers through her hair. She shuddered at his words, her eyes widening and taking on a glassy surface due to the saltiness of the water that had pooled there. She sniffled involuntarily and brought her hand up to wipe away some of the tears that had escaped. Millie paused, her eyes narrowing at the sight of him with the spliff between his lips. Mille wouldn’t have been able to tell you what came over her, she could barely examine it herself but perhaps it was hypocrisy, perhaps it was her anger towards him, perhaps it was a mixture of both, but upon seeing him fumble with the lighter, her hand shot out and slapped his, sending the lighter flying across the room.

“I’ve had too many?!” She hissed at him, rising to her feet, slamming the plate down on the coffee without a care as to the china as the tears began to fall. “How many of those have you had today, Trent?! You twat! You absolute arse! So what if you have your delusions about me in order to sleep?! They aren’t fucking real! I am! I’ve always been real Trent! Why wouldn’t you do something?! You say it as if...as if...you’ve been suffering for years! If that’s the case: why didn’t you fight harder?!”

In truth, even in his supposed bravery of a poor confession, he sounded delirious, certainly mad. He, of course, couldn’t listen to himself. He didn’t even realise her displeasure, sticking true to his general oblivion, which really didn’t last long. The cat, having dozed off after the bit of pizza that Trent had given to him, roused from his sleep at the thud of the lighter next to him. While his eyes had followed the trajectory of the lighter at the wrath of Millie, Trent quickly turned them to her. Shocked at the slight turn of aggression, his eyes went wide with alarm.

Millie had always been the more active of the two. Really, though, that wasn’t hard to be, considering his dreadful passivity. Still, Trent wasn’t used to Millie using this sort of assertiveness against him. He deserved it; there was no doubt about that. But he wasn’t accustomed to it. Perhaps that was why the massive fight they had years ago cut that much. He was, after all, overtly sensitive. And to have Millie direct her anger at him with such a force drove him mad with anger and disappointment. Still, he was to blame, as much as she was.

She was doing it again, going off on a tirade that upset him more because of the strength of it rather than the content. Trent blinked when she rose to her feet and slammed her plate. At the sound of it, Lucius shot his head up, glaring at Millie. Certainly, it was for waking him up that Lucius was miffed at. He had yet to pay attention to what was going on between Millie and Trent. Trent watched the girl as her tears fell, immediately feeling the iron-fist clenching around his heart. He was hurting her; he was disappointing her like he did to everyone. But, hadn’t he already sealed that years ago. He had hurt her, and that was the last straw of failure he saw in himself, the last straw that he could handle before he combusted.

And like all other impulses that he followed, Trent heeded this one too. Rising up with the same urgency as the speed of hers, he reached for her wrists before losing them to grab her by the waist instead, pulling her towards him as he embraced her. He was merely fulfilling what he had been dying to do for years. The materiality of her embodied existence shocked him. He had been living far too long in his delusions to truly know what it meant to have a body, a real one, so close to him. Trent wrapped her tightly in his arms, exactly like how he imagined himself doing all this time. Then, he brought his face down to her shoulders and buried it there, against the comfort of her neck against his cheek, and her hair brushing his face. He mumbled her name, and then stopped talking to hold back his tears. They were threatening to fall with every second that passed, so he bit hard at his lips to hold them back, involuntarily pressing harder against Millie’s shoulder too.

Millie couldn’t talk fast enough. She couldn’t lay into him at the speed she truly wanted to. She couldn’t cut him up with the words she wanted to because she could only stand there, only just stopping herself from kicking the cat who merely glared up at her in contempt for her waking him. Millie, at that moment, no longer cared for Lucius’ opinion. She never had but especially in that moment she loathed the feline that had never actually belonged to her. Trent was his master; that had always been obvious. It was a wonder he’d stayed with her as long as he had done. Millie half expected him to take off and go in search of Trent but seemingly, Lucius had held out just as she had on the hope that one day Trent would walk back into his life as she prayed he would hers and decide that he actually wanted to be a part of it and stay instead of leaving as he had done in such a catastrophic way beforehand. Millie could never repair herself after the way they had parted, she could only build up battlements that would protect her from further harm - and even they had proved worthless.

Stifling a sob, Millie allowed her eyes to fall shut. Her arms hung limply by her sides, though she could do nothing now to keep herself from falling apart. She could not cling to her body, desperately attempting to keep together the bag of bones that she was now. She’d lost her heart years before. There was just a hole punched through her chest, now. There was nothing else. Millie opened her eyes at the feel of hands on her hips. She looked up to see Trent hovering above her and her hands came up to grip his upper arms, allowing him to engulf her in his embrace. It was then that she allowed herself to freely cry into his chest, the tears no longer few enough to be held back.

Millie’s fingers laced into Trent’s hair as he dipped forward to bury his head into her neck and she involuntarily began to caress the skin that joined his neck to his shoulder. Her eyes closed again and she shuddered with the sobs that wracked her frame, just managing to stutter out her words. “You...you left...you...what could I do? What was I supposed to do? Please...don’t...please don’t leave me...I don’t think I could stand it if you walked out again. Please...” Millie balled his shirt in her fist and brought her face forward to plant a small kiss over the patch of skin she’d been caressing not a moment ago. “Don’t leave anymore...just stay. Stay with me, Trent. Stay now, stay tomorrow, stay the next day and the next...stay forever. Just...please. I’ll never ask anything else of you. I don’t want anything else, I just want you by my side. I can’t go on without you anymore. I’m past the point of being able to convince myself you were never here, in this house...sat in that chair...drinking my beer. I can’t lose you again. Just...please...don’t leave. Please.”

It was a soppy mess. But it was the kind of mess that nobody minded. In fact, it was long overdue. It had taken long enough, and anyone else rooting for the couple would already have left from sheer impatience. Lucius’ contempt flickered to a mixture of curiosity and mild amusement, before settling back down into a sleep of indifference. Trent, on the other hand, had been forced out of his indifference. He had to. If he had decided to continue living his life the way it had been, he would have died a sad old man with seventy-two sticks of joints lying around him. Well, before one gets carried away with the possibility that he was going to escape that, perhaps the better concern would be better spent on the present. And at present, Trent continued to tighten his hold around the skinny frame of the girl. It was too good to feel the material of her body again.

With a slight turn of his head, Trent allowed himself to indulge in the smell of her skin, squeezing the lids of his eyes together as he prevented himself from the overwhelming manifestation of his emotions. Sure, he might have always been reduced to just himself in the presence of Millie, but he still never stopped trying to conceal whatever emasculating mess she compelled him into. He was not going to cry. No, he reckoned with himself, not ever. Instead, Trent concentrated on the reality of Millie’s body. The warmth of it penetrated the pores of his skin just as he began to feel her tears seep through the thin quality of his white t-shirt. He was momentarily distracted from the touch of her fingers at the back of his neck, lapping up the comforting pleasure of her loving touch. It drove him into yet another bout of emotional frenzy, her hands. He had always adored those hands.

She was saying so much, and he listened. He still did not trust himself to speak. He knew that, as soon as he allowed himself to, he would sob into her skin. And so, he merely clung on. With his face against her neck now, Trent began to use his lips to trail the length of it, still ever amazed at the smoothness of her skin. Up and down, in a slow and repetitive motion, he indulged in her smell. And then he began to place light kisses on her neck, careful and uncertain.

He loved her. It was the sort of love where he had lifted her and placed her on a pedestal. Her, with all her flaws. He saw them; he recognised them, all of them. Yet, even in the imperfections, she was his idea of perfect. Having placed her on a pedestal, he could come to her, but only if he was careful with her. He didn’t want to make a mistake that could lead to her fall. He knew he had pushed her off the pedestal before; the result of that fall was evident now in the wreck of emotions she was standing in now. At this point, there was nothing he could point to that said it wasn’t his fault. Yet, unlike previously, he couldn’t walk away on the premise that he didn’t deserve her because he had hurt her. The misery in her voice and her almost imploring demands for him to stay rooted him to where he was, standing there, protectively embracing her.

He mumbled her name again, but persisted in his careful kisses that were so light, as if he feared that any further pressure would rattle her frame. He didn’t want to impose himself on her, but she was calling for him to act, and he recognised it. It was the sort of unspoken familiarity that he had with her, and that he hadn’t forgotten. She was going on and on, and Trent didn’t mind, except that she sounded increasingly miserable, and Trent wanted to stop it. His trail of kisses extended its path, finding the softness of her cheek, wet from the flow of tears. Trent continued to plant the seeds of his love, moving from her cheek to her temple to her forehead, and to her other cheek. With his nose now, he brushed it gently against Millie’s cheek before resting it beside hers. Then a slight action, where he kissed the space between her nose and her upper lip. Even that space was wet from her tears. Trent repeated his kisses, as if by doing so it would dry the tears that had found their way there.

There had been a gap of about five years since they’d last really spoken to each other. In those five years much had changed but there was much still left to be desired in terms of their lives. Though of the two the female appeared to be the more stable with a house and a well-paying job and perhaps even a boyfriend, she was as broken and as trodden into the ground as the male whose drug intake was enough to write his story out for him. The pair had parted far from whole and when the loneliness began to seep in, the destruction of their happiness seemed inevitable. Millie’s dissolved the day she left the group and joined Isla’s. Though she was happy with the friends she’d made she could not help but, even now, feel out of place and quite a bit different from the rest of the girls. They’d tried, Merlin knew they’d tried, but they’d long since given up Millie for a lost case in terms of emotional balance. Isla had hoped in vain that Stewart would right her best friend and finally make her happy but it was the creature that had walked into her life again, naked, that was the key to her happiness, the key to fixing her, she hoped, lest he destroy what was left of her shattered form.

It was the feel of him, so raw and so real, that allowed her to really understand the situation at hand. Millie’s eyes had fallen shut long ago and her senses leapt in sensitivity to compensate, her skin set on fire with his every touch. The tightness of his hold did not faze Millie, the pressure of it against her ribcage proof enough that it was rule. Her eyes still watered despite being covered and she could not quite prevent herself from giving little sobs that were at best involuntary, at worst necessary to clear the thick of the tears that seemed to be based in her throat despite leaking out from her eyes. It was the emotion, she supposed. Her fingers tightened on the thick hair by the nape of his neck, her other hand slipping beneath the sleeve of his shirt and rising to lie across his shoulder. Millie’s breath quickened slightly at the feel of his lips against her skin and she found herself squeezing him closer, pressing herself tighter against him as if inviting him to consume her completely. Her breath hitched at the feel of his lips solid against her neck. Millie twisted her neck slightly, turning it away from him but only so as to allow for more movement on his part, a small, subtle plea for him to continue. She could not analyse what it meant, she didn’t dare, and instead she just basked in the feel of his hands against her body and his lips on her skin.

“Trent...”

Words, though they failed her, meant nothing anymore. The actions spoke louder than their words ever could. Millie felt her hand slip from his shoulder and she hesitantly brought it out from underneath his shirt to his chest where she pressed against the left side, feeling for the heartbeat that, to her delight, was stronger than she ever remembered it being. Millie gave a small gasp and reopened her eyes, finding Trent far closer than her brain would have imagined it - the organ still imagining the exaggeration of great oceans between them. Her breath quickened with each inhale and she found herself pressing impossibly closer to him, as if her prior attempt had not brought her close enough. She smiled a little as he placed kisses across her face and she lifted her face just that little bit closer to his, nudging his nose with her own before placing a feather light kiss upon his lips, hesitant though it was, tentative, unsure. Millie moved her face away slightly and her eyes flicked up to Trent’s. Her hand slipped around from his neck and cupped his cheek. She brushed her thumb across his cheek bone and murmured his name again, her smile returning as she took him in.

How time had changed them both for they were already grown, as if by magic.