Last Flight Out

By:  Sierra

 

"You understand what this means?"

 

"Of course I do."

 

"The last flight out. No turning back."

 

A plane rushed overhead in a fury of flight, trailing long white clouds behind it. Far below, two figures stood as close as humanly possible to each other, both with their faces turned to the sky.

 

"No turning back," the blond repeated after the blue-eyed figure, turning his face to the ground.

In his hands, he grasped a tattered, battered brown suitcase, torn in a few places and frayed in a couple more. He traced over the these patches with his eyes, trying to keep his hands steady. They gripped nervously on the handles- made of worn down and polish-smooth leather. Clenching and unclenching each hand around the leather, he could almost feel the warm scent drift up to his nostrils, reminding him faintly of earlier, simpler days when he had first bought the suitcase. He had been so full of hope and so young back then.

 

"And you won't regret it?"

 

The blond turned his face from the concrete up to the voice, the only steady vision that had the ability to make him smile in the middle of the hell they were living.

 

He tried to meet those blue eyes, but found them still averted upward and wavering over the sky. All over those chiseled features was a smooth dark cloud, only impressed further by a steep down-turn of his mouth. Each eyebrow was arched in pain and each tousled, stray piece of dark brown falling across his forehead proclaimed his deepening sadness.

 

The blond, his gaze still intent upon the man next to him, reached down and placed his bag lightly on the ground. The slight clicking sound of its metal bottom on the concrete was swallowed by the rush of clicking all around them- of boots, shoes, and high heels, running frantically and never seeming to cease.

 

The constant pounding of the concrete was accompanied by the screams and shouting that drifted all throughout the air, swirling into a madness of thick terror. That insanity seemed to stop right outside an invisible circle drawn around the two figures.

 

"Look at me, Josh."

 

Slowly, the upward gazing head was turned toward the blond by inches of angles until it was comfortably on his level. Still, those blue eyes courted the ground and ran along the cracks in the concrete, the spills of gasoline, and the occasional black tire tread.

 

"I can't."

 

The blond pushed his chin forward and tried to meet those eyes, which danced such a clumsy, exotic dance over the ground. "Why not?"

 

"Because I'll see the pain in yours. I'll see it clouded and hidden from me, but I know that it's there. I know that beyond the covered words, you really want to stay here. You always were very good at disguising your voice, Lance, but you never could hide the truth in your eyes. I've seen them too many times not to know what each glance and little flash means."

 

He finally met eyes with the blond, and deep within them was that wavering, scared, and child-like look. Another plane rushed overhead, darkening the entire sky for an instant. He averted his eyes again and watched the plane disappear off the horizon and through clouds tinged with a deep blue.

 

"You have everything here and nothing to be running from. Taking that plane with me would mean never coming back. Never. I don't want to see you leave everything you ever knew when you don't have to."

 

The blond picked up his suitcase again. He glanced around at the running people, hair whipping behind frantic women and men holding tight to clumsily bundled suitcases. Little children cried by the dozens and clutched tightly to their mothers, and a few even stood alone and panicked, quieted by no one and drowning in their own tears.

 

"You… don't understand."

 

The blue eyes darted quickly from the sky where they had been focused with such a passion to the green ones beside him. Josh heard such a terrible sob run through that voice that his heart jumped entirely down his rib cage. He had been right, after all. Lance was always able to hide the pain in his voice. He was able to hide the deepest, most heart-wrenching pain until it came pouring from him like a blocked mouth gasping for air.

 

Josh suddenly held his hand out and the blond took it tightly, grasping every inch of it with a passion.

 

Behind them, men in dark blue uniforms were rushing people along and shouting out orders that were lost to the deafening screams in the total madness. People grasped at each other and were tearing at the officers' clothing, to the point where a few had deep rips in their sleeves. The chain link fence beyond the officers was being scaled by a couple dozen other frantic people, only to be beaten down in the heat of the moment as they tried to escape. Another plane flew overhead.

 

Through faint sobs, the blond tore his gaze away from those blue eyes and looked with a hatred at the sights around him. "How do I have everything here? If I do watch that plane leave, and go home with this horrible old suitcase, everything I ever had will be gone. Everything I ever had will be thousands of feet above and away from me."

 

"I'll stay here then."

 

"You'll be killed."

 

"I don't care."

 

"I do."

 

Their hurried conversation stopped and drifted away over the pitching loudness of the screams.

 

For one moment, frozen stiff and chilled into ice, their gazes met and then broke.

 

"You mean it? You'd leave this all?"

 

"Yes."

 

"You can't ever come back. You'll never see it again."

 

"I know." The blond grasped the hand a bit harder and then let his fingers trail away from their interlacing hold. "Ready?"

 

There was one final sigh and an averted gaze backward. Then there was a nod, a slow, deliberate one that took in more weight then the terror around them.

 

With two tickets grasped firmly in his hands, he nodded with his blue eyes to frenzied officers and waved the tickets high in the air, to avoid having them snatched away from the hundreds of people pressing in for them. The chain link fence was opened with a hurry and a deafening creak, but a creak that sounded like heaven to anyone that was passing through.

 

Tears splashed onto the warm concrete and hands reached forward wildly from the crowd as the gate was shut again behind the two figures, one holding a battered suitcase and the other holding tightly onto the leather handles and his lover's fingers. With a clatter of the gate, the madness was left behind and only a double pair of hearts pounded loudly.

 

They beat wildly with each step up the iron plane's unstable stairs. They hammered with each scream that echoed out behind them. They pounded with each memory that was to be left behind and never visited again. They beat loudly with each thought of not knowing what would meet them when the plane touched land again.

 

The blond found his lover's eyes and didn't even attempt to deceive him. Instead, he took his chin in his hand and cupped it lightly until those tantalizing lips met his own, telling them that he did, indeed, have everything with him, and not just in his small battered suitcase.

 

The crowd cried below as the last loud roar of escape sounded above them. As regularly as clockwork, a plane was flying away overhead.

 

The End

 

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