and when the sun comes up,
we'll be nothing but dust

just the outlines of our hands

- shallows, daughter

PAST

He goes to her graduation, lacking a small factor called an invitation. He stays far away, but not far enough to miss the golden hair that crowns her head or the sun hitting her on the crook of her shoulder as she smiles and reaches for her diploma, shaking her principal's hand. He watches her swing her arms over her two closest friends and grin at the cameras, her face absolutely glowing.

He approached her only later, as everyone left with their families. With no fancy graduation dinner to attend afterwards, she walked around the park, holding her high heels hooked under her fingers, brushing past the blonde hair that got in her eyes. She sits down on a bench and lights a cigarette.

He sits down next to her and for a while, neither of them say anything.

"Well?" The first word she's said to him in three years. Her voice had changed. But it also didn't.

"You look great," he grins at her, looking sideways.

Her jaw clenches, and she looks firmly straight ahead, but he caught the slight blush that spread across her cheeks. She sucks on the inside of her bottom lip and says nothing.

"You smoke now."

"Yeah, so?"

"Nothing."

Her eye twitches at the comment and she scowls. He smiles only slightly, and scoots closer to her.

"What, are you going to tell me I'm killing the environment and all the biotic and abiotic factors in it?" she exhales, coughing slightly.

"I'm guessing you don't really smoke that often?"

She purses her lips and looks at the grass in front of them.

He placed a hand on her arm, feeling the goosebumps rise beneath his fingertips. She catches him off guard when she places her head on his shoulder. He'd grown taller in the years that she had been away. His voice had deepened, he shot up a few inches.

"I'm sorry. For...you know. Everything."

"I know."

She takes her head off his shoulder and looks at him. Her eyes are blank and unemotional, but from this distance he can count all of her dark lashes and freckles on her nose, before his vision blurs.

PAST

One night he is prowling silently across the rocks of the Tower during a birthday party for Cyborg and all the Titans are there, and he knows he should be inside the living room celebrating, and not waiting for a girl who he knows isn't gonna show up, can't show up, even when she wants to. He's a wisp of a shadow within shadows, until the scent of dust is suddenly upon him, clinging to his nostrils and clogging his mouth and it's heavy and distressing and then she's there and it becomes beautiful.

He turns, hands in his pockets, and gives her the biggest grin.

He sees her smile under the moonlight, clutch the dress she's wearing in her tiny fists and she starts moving towards him. Of course, she is barefoot. He starts running towards her across the rocks, probably clumsily and stupidly but he doesn't care because her arms are thrown around his neck and his are wrapped around her waist and for the barest of moments, he feels complete.

"You came," he breathes against her mouth as he kisses her, her hands tangling insistently in his hair.

His eyes dilate in the darkness when she pulls back, and it is only at that moment that he notices what colour her dress is.

"You're wearing green," he whispers, his fingers sliding against the floating fabric as she smiles self-consciously and picks at a loose thread.

"Yeah. It matches your eyes."

"I guess it does," he agrees quietly, smiling the smallest amount, and then his thumb brushes against her cheek and ignites a blush that quickly floods her whole face. "But it looks even better when you wear it with pink."

She laughs, the sound all bells in the arching silence of the tower, and then their lips meet again in an unspoken agreement to maybe just cut the chit-chat and try that feeling thing again, because neither of them are really any good at it.

"Love you," he mumbles self-consciously, his hands gripping the green dress tightly because he fears if he holds her too firmly she'll dissipate through his desperate fingers. She smiles up at him, her eyes almost black in the faint light of the moon.

"I know."

There is more silence as her magnificent dust smell gathers in his nose and it probably isn't dust at all but it clings to him and makes him remember happy days with fireworks and roller coasters rides in the amusement park in secret and recklessness and young love and Terra. It sits on his tongue and it produces bewildering, bizarre memories … and in fact it's not dust at all, but it has the same effect so he'll call it dust until he works out what it really is.

PRESENT

They're lying down on the couch in the living room at Titans Tower. Her legs are spread across his lap, not shy at all. He really has no idea what to do with his hands at this point, so he rests them awkwardly on her bruised knees.

She raises her arms over her head and closes her eyes, a mischievous smile playing on her lips.

He snaps his attention elsewhere. Not her curves, not her chest, certainly not her legs that were...endless. She is no longer the pre-pubescent gangly girl that she was when they first met, but similarities remain, nonetheless. Huge dark blue orbs that demanded attention and long golden hair that framed her face.

It wasn't long before curves had begun to show on her far too thin build. She had became more graceful, and there were small things he remembered about her. Memories that he couldn't push out, despite his efforts. The small scatter of freckles on her nose, the mole behind her ear, a spot he had learned where she was very ticklish.

She catches him looking, and cocks an eyebrow, lips parted. He smiles cheekily and looks up at the ceiling, whistling to himself.

She lets out an airy laugh and shakes her head. Rolling her eyes, she reaches out and puts her hand on the back of his neck, pulling him forward. He draws in his breath before her lips collide onto his. She kisses him. He loses himself in her breath and her warmth and her smell.

His arm hits the drinks on the coffee table, and they fall to the floor. He vaguely hears the liquid splash and form a puddle.