Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it.

There are men shining a light in his eyes and shouting at him, and he's scared and doesn't know who they are or – actually – who he is. The noise and confusion echo in the confines of this small room. The threat of violence is palpable, and when he sees a gun he panics, and suddenly he's –

- halfway up a tree. His ears hurt from the sudden silence, and the air's cold and so is the bark he grabs as he starts to fall. Looking around wildly, he notices a boy beside him, staring at him open-mouthed, and he stares back because the boy's not holding on to any rough bark, and his shoes are hanging unsupported in the air.

"What the fuck?"

The boy's floating, and boys are definitely not supposed to be floating, and what is he doing floating outside some house in the middle of the night?

But then he knows. Because this tree overlooks a bedroom, and in the bedroom he can see a slight figure with long, blonde hair. He's about to answer the boy when she turns around.

"Who is she?" That face is like – seeing it's like being hit.

He takes his eyes off her, with difficulty, and the boy's scared face makes him feel, oddly, dangerous. "The girl. Who is she?"

"Her name's Claire. She goes to my school."

Claire.

"Get out of here." He must look frightening, because the boy obeys instantly.

Flying boys and men with guns are pushed out of his thoughts, and he can't focus on anything but the girl in that bedroom. There's a branch that looks pretty sturdy right outside the window, and without thinking about the consequences, he inches out on it and knocks.

She looks as shocked as he feels. For a split second he actually doubts this, has a vision of screaming and police cars pulling up outside, but then she opens the window and pulls him through, awkwardly. He knees her in the side by accident but she doesn't seem to care, throwing her arms around him as soon as she gets him upright.

"Peter, oh my God, oh my God."

His name. Must be. He holds her tightly, and she feels like heaven and smells like something he thinks he might have dreamt about, something all tangled up with the thought of her hair and her eyes, the way they feel like memories. He knows her. He wants to ask her how.

"Claire - "

But she looks up at him, and something in her upturned face makes him forget what he wanted to say, and instead he kisses her.

It's not – there are a lot of things that this kiss is not, including brief, controllable, and chaste – but it's not familiar, either.

When they break apart he pushes her away, gently. "I'm sorry. We don't kiss, do we?"

The look on her face is suddenly very hard to read. "No."

Peter – that is his name, after all – steps back against the wall and folds his arms, just to be on the safe side, and tells her everything he can remember. About his entire life. It doesn't take very long.

Claire won't tell him who he is, who she is, why the fact that he went from being handcuffed and terrified to outside her window in half a second doesn't surprise her, or why they don't kiss when they were clearly born to do it. He can feel the distance stretching out between them with every question she claims she can't answer.

When he admits he's tired Claire goes to steal some pajamas from her brother, leaving him shut in her room, hiding behind drawn curtains. When she comes back she catches him staring at himself in the mirror. But she doesn't say anything about it.

He can't leave the room. She can't sleep anywhere else. She can't tell him anything until she talks to her dad, which she'll do in the morning, but for some reason she can't just go and talk to him now. The rules are frustrating, seemingly arbitrary, so when she turns off the lights and lies down beside him he kisses her again, because it's the only question she can't seem to help but answer.

Whatever reason they might have had for not kissing flies out the window. Claire kisses him back like she's drowning, and this time she doesn't let him stop.