// leaving me our fading flame //

It's still dark when he stops the car and pulls over, the last of the night sky bleeding away, slowly replaced by the pale light of morning. It's both early and late, that strange stretch of time where nothing exists but breath and secrets, and no one to share them with. There is a map somewhere behind his eyes, filled with roads and highways and places he's never seen, marked only by tiny, pinprick dreams.

I have to go, was all he'd said, and Chris had nodded like he already knew. JC thinks he probably did.

He takes off his shoes, and the sand is cool and smooth beneath his feet. No footprints but the ones he's leaving behind, no sound but the gentle swell of waves and the distant cry of gulls. Plenty of room in his head for words and music, but JC doesn't want those right now; doesn't want anything but this brand-new silence wrapping round him like something he never knew he missed until it was gone.

When will you be back, Chris had asked, and JC could tell he already knew the answer to that, too. But he'd stopped anyway, his hand on the door, already on the wrong side of some line neither of them could remember drawing. I don't know, he'd said softly without turning around, the words the most honest he'd been in far too long. A kiss, awkward and strangely chaste, and JC can taste salt on his lips.

From the sea, he thinks. It's from the sea.

- for circusgirl.

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