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Waiting
Dec 29, 2005 15:56:53 GMT 8
Post by BlueSails on Dec 29, 2005 15:56:53 GMT 8
Jess watched Kathy leave, a faint smile touching her expression so that the worry in her face was smoothed out. Only when she was alone did Jessica Alejo show her true emotions; with others, she was always the happy, bouncy, friendly girl that she made herself look like. I'm so glad Kathy's my friend, she thought, fingering the empty candy wrapper in her pocket. That girl thinks of others so much that she forgets to think about her own needs. Jess had had to remind her friend to go ahead home instead of wait for her here. She sat on a small bench outside the hospital room, since Marissa and Taylor had told her to wait there.
A few minutes passed, and then the fear started.
Jess had always had an uncontrollable, unstoppable, terrible phobia of the dark. When she was little she had reassured herself with the fact that it would go away, but she discovered that it never left her, even now that she was 16 years old. Shivering slightly, Jess started to twitch at every little movement in the corridor, scenes from all the horror movies she had watched coming back to her.
It wasn't the dark so much as her imagination; when it was dark, her eyes played tricks on her, creating ghosts and zombies and shadows everywhere. Jess started to tremble. The tension in the air thickened as a growing anxiety stirred in her mind, telling her to get out of the hospital and fast. But it would be worse to walk out on the street alone, she told herself, and so she was trapped with herself.
Was that a corpse on the stretcher, or just a sick person? The body moved, and she jumped back, falling off the small bench outside room 267. The bench tipped over backwards on top of her, and someone shouted out from another corridor. It was actually just a doctor calling for a nurse to help, but Jess heard it as a moan of some malignant spirit come to ward her away from its haunts...
She screamed, feeling as if her heart would burst out of her chest, and curled up into a ball, rocking slightly back and forth, waiting for the monster that wasn't there. She didn't cry, she was already too horrified by her mind to even draw a proper breath. Her sobs came out as ragged gasps for air. And she was alone in the aisle, even if there were a few doctors and hospital staff just around the corner, because Jess believed she was alone. The fear had never been as bad as this; she whispered for her mom, dad, sister, brother, anyone to come and help.
Zack slept on inside his hospital room, dreaming of a certain brown-eyed beauty and oblivious to the havoc wreaked in his sister's mind.
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Waiting
Dec 29, 2005 16:21:25 GMT 8
Post by kandie on Dec 29, 2005 16:21:25 GMT 8
Julian was walking down a hallway when she heard a frantic scream. It sounded so familiar, yet he couldn't quite place it. His eyebrows furrowed and he ran towards the scream. He had a bit of trouble seeing since it was kind of dark, almost crashing into several walls.
As his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness he walked down the many corridors of the hospital. Finallyl he found the source of the scream earlier, and when he did his face had switched from an expression of surprise to that of worry. She looked so scared, like a child.
Julian kneeled down in front of her, putting his hand on her shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze "Jess, what's wrong?"
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Waiting
Dec 29, 2005 16:42:08 GMT 8
Post by BlueSails on Dec 29, 2005 16:42:08 GMT 8
Somehow it didn't cross her mind that the hand on her shoulder was warm, human flesh, and she screamed again, with one quick jerk twisting away from his arm. She thrust herself away, backward across the tiled floor, and then finally her eyes adjusted to the dark, revealing Julian's face.
At the moment Jess didn't care if it had been Saddam Houssein right there in the corridor with her. She heaved herself up and then suddenly, without any warning and with almost no consciousness of what she was doing, threw her arms around his neck and held on, almost as if she was seven years old again and it was Zack she was embracing instead of... instead of...
At 10:17 pm in the fifth corridor of Briarstone Medical Hospital's patient rooms, Jessica Alejo's sobs stopped abruptly, and silence brought new recognition.
...can't breathe...
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Waiting
Dec 29, 2005 17:15:08 GMT 8
Post by kandie on Dec 29, 2005 17:15:08 GMT 8
Seeing the terrified look on Jess' face as she jerked his own hand away from her shoulder made Julian even more concerned than he was. This wasn't the Jess he met and hung out with in the mall. This wasn't the Jess who danced the macarena in Math class. The wasn't Jess...his Jess, and it scared him.
Before he could delve deeper into his emotions though, Jess had flung her arms around his neck. Julian's eyes widened a great amount and with his surprise together with the amount of force Jess had used to jump and hug him made him step back a couple of times. Instinctively his loving side had surfaced and he wrapped his own arms around her waist. Whispering some comforting words into her eyes and helping her calm down by patting her back gently.
"Are you ok? Jess tell me what's wrong?" he finally asked after silence had greeted them both.
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Waiting
Dec 29, 2005 17:29:04 GMT 8
Post by BlueSails on Dec 29, 2005 17:29:04 GMT 8
I feel...
I feel aware.
My arms around him... His arms around me.
For a few seconds after Julian had spoken, no answer came back to him. Jess couldn't speak.
She didn't want to.
The fear wasn't entirely gone--she could sense it there, outside her eyelids shut tight. But something else warded it off, taking the focus of her mind away from ghosts and spirits.
She felt every single bit of tingling, from every single place they touched. It was unfamiliar, yet she knew what it was. The tingling made her numb, yet she felt every little bit of shifting in their movement as his chest rose slowly up and down in time to his breathing.
And in the midst of the completely tangled mess of emotions jumbling themselves inside of her, only one thing was sure--I don't want to let go.
Maybe it was the discovery of how perfectly she fit, in that special place only couples know, encircled by his arms and something else she could not--would not name. Subconsciously her arms tightened; then she remembered that she was Jess and he was Julian, and that she was--
"Oh--my--God--" Quickly dropping her arms from where they rested and pushing herself back, Jess felt herself turn the deepest shade of crimson and found that his arms were still around her waist, so that they held her not in an embrace... but still close to him.
And as much as she blushed and stuttered apologies and wished she could run as far away from him as possible, Jess loved it. Loved how it felt. Loved...?
"I'm really, really, sorry..."
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Waiting
Dec 29, 2005 17:48:13 GMT 8
Post by kandie on Dec 29, 2005 17:48:13 GMT 8
ooc: OOOOH! *shudders* AWESOMELY FLUFFY! WOHOOO!
As Jess let him go his body suddenly felt cold and, as much as Julian hated to admit it, vulnerable. When she had hugged him at first, sure he was a bit surprised, but he had melted into the embrace; tightening his hold on her. He didn't want to let go, ever. It was as if, in that single moment, Jess had become his lifeline.
Seeing Jess in front of him, sputtering apologies he shook his head with a gentle smile and a warm glint in his eyes. He slowly pulled her back into an embrace, leaning a little so his head was able to lay in the crook of Jess' neck. He knew of what might happen. She might see him as a freak, she might even avoid him. However right now, the oppurtunity was too good to waste. Right now, he just wanted to hold her and not let anything outside of their own world, interfere with them.
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Waiting
Dec 29, 2005 17:55:49 GMT 8
Post by BlueSails on Dec 29, 2005 17:55:49 GMT 8
"...and I shouldn't, it's just, I have a phobia and--"
He pulled her back to him.
Something exploded in Jess's mind and, with her eyes wide open, she suddenly knew.
Who was I kidding? How can I hide...this? It's impossible... ...Yet a dream, come true.
Am I...falling?
Ever so slowly and gently, as if she thought he would shatter to pieces if she made one jerking movement, Jess slipped her hands over his shoulders and locked her fingers behind him, her body against his once again.
She would have given anything to keep it that way, but at any moment now her parents would probably come down the aisle and shoot Julian's head off.
Closing her eyes, with one last deep sigh of contentment, Jess tightened her embrace for a second and then released him, gently taking each of his hands and letting them go, back at his sides.
"I can't."
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Waiting
Dec 29, 2005 22:55:57 GMT 8
Post by kandie on Dec 29, 2005 22:55:57 GMT 8
His heart and mind plummeted when she said those two words. He closed his eyes for a bit, breathing in deeply. His shoulders slumped and once he opened his eyes, there was nothing. No signs of any emotion, any pain he felt at the moment. Julian did this everytime he felt he should hide himself from the outside world, putting a shell around him so he wouldn't hurt those he loved or himself. And even if it was wrong, it reassured him. Protected him.
Hazel eyes looked down at Jess and put on a hollow smile "Alright. Want me to walk you home? It's pretty dark outside as it is." he said in a monotone voice, no signs of the Julian he was only moments ago.
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Waiting
Dec 30, 2005 19:39:23 GMT 8
Post by BlueSails on Dec 30, 2005 19:39:23 GMT 8
She almost saw something slide across his eyes... or was it behind them? Like a curtain drawn across a window, the light seemed to drain from Julian's face. Jess knew it wasn't really him--she had gotten that look a lot of times when she was daydreaming in class, only not this sad--but she thought, Maybe it's better this way. With nothing to complicate our friendship. Still, she had to try.
"Julian, I'm sorry, it's not that--"
"Jess? Are you ready to go?" Taylor came into view, a large lantern-style flashlight in his hand. "Who's this?" A flicker of suspicion passed across his face, and he glanced at his daughter quickly.
"Dad, this is Julian Ramirez, one of my new friends. His sister's in the hospital, too, and he kept me company when the lights were off." Something inside her shook violently when she remembered the dark, and Jess gave her Dad a look that meant, You'd better not say anything. She knew Taylor understood her fear of the dark, but it would be a bit hard to convince her Dad to leave Julian alone. He had once taken a 6-minute-interview with Zack's former girlfriend, Angela.
Fortunately, Taylor kept quiet. "Sorry about that. I checked with the desk clerks, and they said that there was a minor power outage on this floor."
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Waiting
Dec 30, 2005 20:22:06 GMT 8
Post by kandie on Dec 30, 2005 20:22:06 GMT 8
"Nice to meet you Mr. Alejo." Julian smiled, bowing. "Well, I gotta get home. It is pretty late after all." he said facing Jess, he waved goodbye and turned around, walking to the elevator and out the hospital.
Julian let out a deep breathe he didn't know he was holding in and as he walked home, his mind wondered more than it had in a while.
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Waiting
Dec 30, 2005 21:53:10 GMT 8
Post by BlueSails on Dec 30, 2005 21:53:10 GMT 8
Taylor, his mind already on a nice warm bed and cup of hot chocolate, put his hand around his daughter's shoulders and gently steered her out of the hospital behind Julian. When they got to the crossroads where the main street met Rosewood and Santan, Jess went her way and Julian went his.
"You're getting so tall, Jessie, soon I'll be looking up to talk to you," Taylor said, but Jess didn't answer. She risked one last look behind them, the trouble in her eyes hidden expertly by a politely interested expression.
But still thinking of...
OOC: He bowed? LOL!
And...
[END OF THREAD!!!!!]
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