Never. I can’t ever leave you. You can’t go somewhere I will not follow.

How could she suggest such a thing, ever imagine such a thing. Jack wants to live, if only to be fettered to her side, pacts of silver at their temples and knuckles, choosing to die when she dies. This time final, this time sweet. To fall asleep and run out of tomorrows and trade them for the color of her eyes and the slim of her fingers trapped in his as they face the grey as a pair. He wants to pledge it, to shout it from mountaintops until all of existence might ring with his declaration. Until even Death softens and in it’s mercy grants him a boon of Orpheus, and let him stay and share with her whatever existence this might be in whatever this place is.

But he doesn’t know how to lie to her. He will always leave because he has never really existed. Not in a tangible way. Not in a way that matters.

Instead, he nuzzles his stubbled cheek into her own, tells her “I have missed you so.”

“Please.

The whisper is so raw it makes Jack’s chest ache.

He nods, speechless but trying to convey that yes; anything he has is hers. Everything he is, has always been hers. Overwhelmed and overstimulated, pulse beating a tattoo on the inside of his skull and back of his ribs, he sways into her. She clutches at his shirt, but how can the linen possibly offer security when he feels so unsteady on his feet?

Suddenly, Jack feels out of his element. He opens his mouth to speak, swallows hard, tries again. He’s studied all the languages of man and fae and now struggles for words to properly break the egg-shell silence. They’ve always communicated so much without speech, heated gazes full of longing their best and only language for so much of the time. And in the depths of her eyes tonight, though he is for once so close, he can read epics.

They sing to him poetic verses of sorrows long turned to ash and reborn as fragile phoenixes in the lonely watches of night. Of regrets from past lives she’s never managed to bury. Of futures just beyond reach, now made flesh in a masquerade of happily-ever-afters. In the golden swirls, he can see apologies and fear and all the beautiful tragedy of a woman who’s accidentally cloven herself to a ghost. Unable and unwilling to free herself from the tangled snare he’d placed around her neck like an emerald necklace.

So he watches, her face in his hands, as she makes him bare himself in turn. He holds her gaze and his tongue and simply surrenders to this new form of communication. She’d started to introduce him to the language of her body before and he’d reciprocated. But as painfully wonderful a charade as it was, it seems now childish gibberish compared to the actual heat of her touch.

She splays her fingers across the breadth of his stomach and Jack inhales slowly, shakily, pressing more firmly into her hands. Her face constricts without her knowledge and he realizes she has never witnessed the rhythm of his breathing. So foreign a concept to him before, now indubious and measurable proof of his solidity. Of realness.

He still does not feel real, does not trust the validity of this dreamscape. Does not trust the unsteadiness of his breaths. A myriad of sensations unpleasantly faerie comes to his attention in a rush, spurred from paying credence to the simple act of breathing. His muscles tremor and shake beneath his raised skin, each contraction setting his nerves prickling. He’s hot, dampness forming in the crevices of his back and at his brow. He feels feverish, incubated by Electra tugging his belt from its place round his hips.

He’s erect, painfully straining against the confines of his trousers, which feel prickly and stark in contrast to the cool silk of her gown under his palms. He’s dizzy, wanting the spice of her scent to come to the forefront and stop battling with the powdery florals of the tented canopy around them, but unsure of how to achieve it. He feels too tight in his own skin, movement out of sync with his brain, gravity contending against his every move where it had previously been absent. He’s hungry, famished and craving something he can’t name. The tear tracks at the corner of his eyes itch and his eyes continue to water as he stares at Electra removing his outer shield piece by piece. He realizes it’s from failing to blink. He doesn’t want to, scared to close his eyes in case she vanishes in the span of his eyelids opening again.

“If this is all we have…” he eventually echoes.

Surely. Surely this must be real. So many perceptions, so many feelings. His imagination isn’t powerful enough to fake all of this. For the first time, Jack is wholly and inescapably in the present. Every sense is honed in to the what and how of Electra existing within his personal space.

She abandons his waist to guide his mouth back to hers and enthusiastically, he obeys. Scoops her up in both arms and thrills at the press of silk against his bare chest, the heat of her radiating through. He kisses her until she’s ready to break for air, until she’s ready to burst his heart wide open with three simple words.

“Electra,” he says again. Soft. Revenant.

You infuriating, stubborn, ethereal creature. I waited for you. I need you. Don’t you dare leave me again. I won’t survive it. You’re everything. But he says none of this, can’t even begin to say this, even in this most isolated, safe space created only for them. Useless sentiments to leave like wounds when this time together inevitably ends. So he just presses his lips to the soft curls at Electra’s nape, to the tender corner of her mouth, and tries to say the next best thing that’s honest.

“I have longed to hear you say that...for such a long time.”

Jack sheds the rest of his shirt and toes off his boots while she twirls at the dark swatches of his hair. He pulls her hands free, kissing each of her wrists as they pass, directing her back down his torso in a slow slide. Her nails catch on one of his nipples and he jolts, bites his tongue to stifle a moan. He guides her fingers back to his waist, leaving her at the buttons of his trousers and making no effort to avoid leaning into her knuckles.

He reaches up to span her hips, traces up to count her ribs and then around to her shoulder blades, rubs circles in the silk there before resting at the delicate brass clasps at the apex of her arms. He fiddles at the bits of metal, knowing one tug is all it will take to send the fabric pooling to her ankles, baring her to his gaze and his touch.

He waits, seeking permission in her face. He took too greedily last time, always the first to reach out, the first to make demands. She has started the dance this time and he would be amiss to step on her toes and steal the lead. So he waits, leans in to kiss her bottom lip, then her top lip, and repeats. Slides over to her earlobe, never lifting his mouth from her flushed skin. Waits for them to fall in sync.

“I would very much like to make love to you.”