miracle | tayley

sanity, why must you make a fool of me?

     "Hayley," she hears a familiar female voice calling her name. There's an urgency in it that makes her stomach ache and she fights to stay asleep. "Hayley, you need to wake up, honey. It's Taylor." She blinks awake, her eyes bleary from sleep and her head fuzzy and confused.

     "Michelle?" she asks, sleepily. "What're you doing here?" The light is hurting her eyes and they burn and tear up in response to the harsh yellow-white glow of her bedside lamp. She watches in horror through blurred vision as the older woman's face crumples dramatically.

     "It's Taylor, honey," she says on a sob. "There's been an accident," she manages, her voice thick with tears.

     Hayley feels everything inside of her go ice cold. "What?" she asks, unable to grasp what Taylor's mother is trying to tell her. "No, he was just- no." She says, sitting up in bed and shoving the covers away from her, adamant that somehow Michelle has gotten this all wrong.

     "He's gone, Hayley," she cries. "Taylor's gone," she says, before dissolving into tears.

     "He can't be gone." She says in disbelief, though her body is already shaking and hot tears of grief have already begun to slip down her cheeks. She continues to deny Michelle's words, unwilling to accept them despite the other woman's obvious distress.

     "No." Hayley practically shouts. "No- Michelle?" She tries, begging the woman in front of her to say she's lying, to say this is an awful, cruel joke. "Michelle, no," she cries, the truth finally beginning to set in as Taylor's mother continues to cry openly, looking pityingly at Hayley, her grief-stricken face all the confirmation Hayley needs to finally believe.

    She sees him then, and it's sudden and shocking. He's lying right in front of her. She bears painful witness to his last breath, and it wrecks her in a way she didn't even know was possible.
He's dead before her, cold- never, ever coming back.

     A cracking sob rips out of her from somewhere deep in her being, and she curls in on herself, trying to go back to the dark, to the safety of before. Before he was gone, before she knew. She chokes out something that she thinks might be his name, but it's unrecognizable even to her own ears. She's crying so hard that she's hyperventilating, choking, and a part of her prays for unconsciousness so she doesn't have to feel this clawing pain anymore.

    "Hayley?" She hears, and it's the cruelest of tricks because it sounds so like him. She cries harder at the unfairness of it. "Hayley," she hears again, and this time she opens her eyes because she feels his hand on her arm, his fingers curling around her bicep.

     She blinks. It's dark, and Taylor is standing in front of her. She can see his outline clearly in the shadowy light cast by the open bathroom door down the hall.

     "Taylor?" She croaks, her throat constricted tightly by her attempt to suppress the sob poised in her chest.

     "Yeah, Hayley, it's me," he says, softly, his hand pressing against her forehead. "Who else would it be?"

     The sob falls from her lips, unbidden. She can't hold it in anymore.

     "Aww, Hayles, it was just a nightmare," he says, softly, and she feels his arms slip around her. She's damp and cold and she finds that she's shivering uncontrollably.

     "You- you were dead," she sobs, shaking her head. "Your mom came to tell me that there'd been an accident," she cries, brokenly. "And I saw you." A violent tremor runs through her body and she pulls back to look him in the eyes, needing to see for herself that he's here with her. "I watched you stop breathing," she says, and she can hear the accusation in her own voice.

     "I'm sorry, Hayley," he says, looking guilty. "But I'm right here, okay? Nothing's happened to me," he assures her. "Look," he says, taking her hand and placing it against his chest. His skin is bare and she can feel the heat of it burning against her hand, can feel the steady thumping of his heart against her open palm.

     Relief surges through her when she realizes that it was all a nightmare. She's in her bedroom and he's here with her, and he's okay.

     "Look," she hears him say. "We need to get you in some dry clothes, okay? You're soaked and freezing." She nods her head, content to go along with whatever he says, her body suddenly physically weak with relief.

     He stands her up at the side of her bed and turns her until she's facing away from him, then he slips his hands under the edges of her t-shirt at either hip and lifts the soft, cotton material up over her head, leaving her bare above the waistband of her boy shorts.

     "Stay right here," he says, one hand grasping her hip, briefly, as if to steady her, before he lets go and steps away from her. "I'm just going to grab your robe. Hang on," he says.

     She turns to face him just as he makes it back to her side. "Hayley!" He hisses, surprise clear in his voice. Before she can say anything, he spins her body away from him, obviously attempting to spare her modesty, but who even cares about that when he'd been dead just moments before? She feels him settle her robe around her shoulders, and as he attempts to maneuver her arms into the wide arm holes, she spins in his embrace and presses her face into his neck, breathing in the familiar scent of him.

     "Hayley," he tries again to reason with her, though this time his arms have wrapped around her, keeping her close, and whether it's to keep her from backing up and exposing herself to him again or to keep her bare skin pressed close to his, she isn't sure, and she honestly doesn't care right this moment. As long as he keeps her here in his arms a little longer. "You've been sick, and you had a nightmare. That's all it was," he whispers, rubbing her back.

     Before she'd turned around, he managed to get her robe on one arm, but the other side was merely draped loosely over her shoulder. His heat is seeping into her skin, warming her from the outside in. He is alive against her and she wants to weep at the relief that keeps flooding through her in waves.

     She loves him.

      She loves him so much, and the fact that he's here with her right now when she needs him is everything. He's not with any of the faceless others, he's not at the bar, he's here. He's okay, and he's here. And maybe tonight, after all those years, and everything they've struggled through, this past year especially, maybe that's enough.

     Maybe they'll figure things out and have some kind of future, and maybe they won't, but suddenly she can't imagine waiting another moment to know him like this. She knows every part of him, she thinks, except this one- this one she's been backing away from since she was old enough to know it existed, but she doesn't want to back away from it anymore. She loves him, and tonight she doesn't need to know exactly what that means or if he feels the same type of love for her- she just needs him to know, she needs to show him.

     There are still tears on her cheeks when she tilts her chin upward and presses a kiss to the side of his jaw. His hands come up to her shoulders, and she thinks for a moment that he'll push her away.

     "Hayley?" He whispers and his voice is rough, uneven.

     "I'm here," she whispers back. It seems like a strange answer, and yet it's the only one she has to give. She's here, and he's here. Right now. That's what she knows. They are both present in a way they haven't been for the better part of a year. The shock of her nightmare and his sudden appearance and her subsequent actions have stripped them of all the bullshit between them and left them standing raw and aching before each other.

     "I'm right here," she whispers against his mouth, her lips finally, bravely finding his.
She thinks he's as lost as she is from that moment on. They are lost to the moment and to each other, and she wouldn't do a thing to stop it even if she could.

     When his lips part under hers, she slips her tongue inside to brush along his, and she feels his fingers dig into the flesh of her biceps in response. Hungrily, she presses closer, angling her head for better access, and he follows her lead, deepening the kiss. He slips his hands up to her neck, her jawline, tilting her head until she's just where he wants her, taking control of her lips with his own with unchecked urgency. His hands slide up until they tangle in her hair and she moans into his open mouth, helplessly.

     "Hayles," she hears him breathe against her, and it's the way he says her name, plaintive and loving, that has her sitting bolt upright in bed.

     She's alone in her bed at Taylor's house in Nashville.

      What the hell was that, she wonders?

      She's emotional and more than a little turned on and shocked to be feeling either of those things. Though, she supposes if you repress a memory long enough it will find a way to the surface, and this is a memory she's been managing to push to the back of her mind for three solid years.

      If this is what one night in Taylor's house has managed to do to her psyche, she can't imagine what the weeks ahead are going to be like.

       Her mouth is almost unbearably dry. A pressing need to quench her thirst has her throwing back the covers and going in search of water, but an irrational fear of running into Taylor in the dark in the middle of the night in her current state has her drinking from the tap in the bathroom and scurrying quickly back to the safety of her room.

      Brian's words from earlier in the night come back to her now.

      Yeah. She is so royally fucked.

***

a/n

double update, sorry i have been busy and keep forgetting to upload these lolsies. 

#firstficchapteroutofjail