Unthinkable (Tate Langdon)

006

September 8th, 1993, continued.

Evangeline could barely control her anger as she marched Tate by the elbow, straight through the doors of the school and directly off campus.

She didn't care if a teacher saw them; they were both practically invisible, anyway.

They walked until they hit the edge of the property and continued on down a rocky dirt path through the woods, silent and determined until they reached a clearing.

She relinquished her hold on his arm and flopped down on a dead but sturdy log, cursing under her breath as she mulled around in her purse for her cigarettes.

"Sit down," she ordered softly, jerking a thumb at the empty spot beside her.

She lit the cigarette between her lips and produced a handkerchief from her purse. She gingerly dabbed at the split in his lip with the dark blue cloth, wincing with him as he grimaced at the pain.

"I should kill him for this," she muttered darkly, eyes filling up with mortifying tears of anger as she continued to patch Tate up as best she could. It broke her heart to see him beaten and broken on her behalf.

"You didn't have to jump in like that," he said in a tone which conveyed that he felt he had to say such a thing. She rolled her eyes.

"Should I have waited until he gave you brain damage?" she countered dryly, passing him her cigarette.

"It's not new," he told her, taking a long drag off of the cigarette and exhaling a plume of smoke. "It's been like this for me for years."

"Well, it's not right," she said defiantly, shaking her head.

Eve had never been one to stand down in the face of something so screwed up, likely one of the reasons she'd yet to make a large assortment of friends.

"Yeah, but what can you do?" Tate asked rhetorically. He passed the cigarette back to her.

"Someone oughta so something," she said, not quite admitting that she knew there was nothing to be done.

"I mean, there's what you said earlier," he suggested cryptically, looking at the ground rather than Eve's eyes. His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed hard. "Killing them. Have you ever really thought about it?"

There was something about the look of him that gave her a chill when he said those words, but she brushed it off. She was probably just overly keyed up from the scuffle with Adam, she decided. He couldn't have been being serious.

"Don't say shit like that, Tate. They'll lock you up," she answered with an uneasy laugh though she wasn't at all sure it had been a joke.

"Yeah, you're probably right," he returned that same brand of forced laughter, scrubbing at his face with his hand.

Biting her lip slightly of nervousness, she reached over and grabbed the hand from his face, holding it tightly in her own.

"High school is just... It's a blip in your life, y'know? It's not forever," she reassured him softly, her thumb gliding over the soft skin on the back of his hand.

She followed his gaze to where it landed on their hands intertwined that way, surprised when his dark eyes snapped up to hers.

"It sort of felt like it until you showed up," he admitted. He spoke not with the sheepish embarrassment one might expect from a teenaged boy, but with a direct seriousness that captivated the entirety of her attention.

She felt her mouth go dry under the scrutiny of his gaze, her eyes locked on his as though they were magnetized.

If she had been having trouble deciding where her feelings for Tate lay before the weekend, that indecisiveness had been swayed pretty dramatically by his behavior since.

First, he'd shown up as though there had been some sort of Bat signal, her hero at the party.

Then, he'd gotten her home without trying anything whatsoever.

To top it all off, he'd gotten the shit kicked out of him defending her.

He'd more than proven himself worthy of affection, so she strongly doubted she'd regret not moving when she watched him incline towards her with plenty of time to pull away.

She stayed perfectly still until his lips met hers, when she kissed him back gently so as not to aggravate his wounded lip.

He was soft and gentle although a bit unpracticed, catching the hang of things quickly as her fingers weaved into his blonde hair. It could have been her imagination entirely, but at the moment, his kiss tasted like bubblegum.

She was at an utter loss as to what to say when they finally pulled apart, knowing without a doubt that boundaries had just silently been redefined.

"So..." Tate hummed, smirking boyishly as he broke the silence.

"Yeah?" she prompted him to continue, laughing softly.

"Does this mean you, uh, y'know... Like me?" he clarified. A flush came over his pale cheeks as he spoke. She would have thought that went without saying and merely smirked.

"Nah, I make out with all the boys with dimples like yours," she teased, rolling her eyes at him.

"Oh, yeah?" he asked playfully. He'd finally caught on to her sarcasm.

"No, not really. Just the ones who get their asses kicked trying to defend my honor," she said as she leaned in and pressed another small kiss to his lips.

A beat of silence passed as they both tried to figure out the least awkward way to proceed - Eve picking at the knee of her fraying pants, Tate worrying his lip between his teeth.

Again, it was he who broke the tension with speaking.

"This isn't some kind of a joke, right?" he asked quietly. His dark eyes had gone serious and wary, a look of genuine foreboding that tugged at Evangeline's heartstrings.

"No, Tate," she reassured him with a squeeze of his hand, "it's not a joke at all."

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Hey guys! So, Tate obviously got what he wanted... For now. These things have a way of coming out, don't they? ;)

You'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, spare a comment or vote if you're enjoying? Thanks!