Black Fire

"Shaney," he said a little bit shakily, "I've got to tell you... I know it's really fucked up and, god, you are going to hate me but I really think you need to know..." He was really having a lot of trouble.
"Shaney, I like you." I just nodded. Oh, how I wanted to grin, but I was a bit too shocked. "I mean I like you," he said.
"Jacob, I know what you mean." I said and buried my face in my hands. As self-conscious as I knew he was at the moment I probably sounded pretty irritated, almost snappy, but I really wasn't.
I started chuckling, shocked - that kind of chuckling that shakes your whole body. With a sigh I calmed myself to a stop and peeked up just above my hands with an almost pained look in my eyes, but a grin finally spread across my lips. That was my bashful look.
He was looking at me like I was crazy, but also with that hurt I knew he felt from both my earlier seemingly-snappy attitude and my sudden chuckling after he made such a serious and difficult admission. That look made the tears well.
"I like you, too, Jakey," I said. It came out in that shaky, crack-y whisper you can hardly help switching too when you start tearing up. "I have for a while now." Hearing myself like that made me feel that much worse because I thought, 'God, I'm just pathetic, aren't I?'
His expression was pure shock for a moment as he came over and sat beside me on the edge of the bed. He took a deep breath and neither of us was smiling anymore. "Wow. I don't even - ... what do -"
" 'What do we do?' " I sighed. "I don't know, either, Jakey."

-Jake-

That small voice, the one shoulder shrug coupled with her half-hearted half-smile, and her still-tearstained cheeks were all killing me. It seemed like all the self-disgust, shame, and guilt that I'd been releasing since that first night when I accused myself of having feelings for her were all just now getting to Shane in one great big surge.
Instinctually I scooted just a little bit closer and wrapped my left arm around her shoulder. She sighed and rested her head on my shoulder while I rested my head on hers.
We just sat there a moment, not moving aside from me idly rubbing my thumb up and down on her shoulder. Then she rested her right hand palm-down on my thigh, not too far above the knee, with all the fingers arched just a bit up off. Unsure if I really should, I slowly lined my own right hand up with hers, laying it lightly on top and lacing our fingers together. My thumbs quickly fell into a rhythm, one stroking her shoulder and the other the inner side of her hand.
Since taking a chance hadn't failed me yet, I pondered my next action for only a split second before going for it. I just gave her a quick peck on the top of her head before nuzzling my cheek back into her hair - I finally noticed it smelled like Eucalyptus and some kind of flower. Not that ballsy a move, but it was a chance and that was sort of the older-sibling/person move anyway. She smiled and sort of snuggled in closer, and both those things made me smile, too.

We just sat there like that for probably 20 or 30 minutes longer, totally silent aside from Shane humming a tune for a few minutes, then me asking what it was. She said she'd let me listen to it eventually.
That was the most comfortable silence I had ever experienced. But, that damned question was inevitably going to come back. Much as we didn't want to, we had to talk or something and figure things out.
"Shaney," I said in a low voice. Everything was so quiet and comfortable that I kind of expected her to have fallen asleep, not to mention she kept her room dim in the first place and it was right around twilight now anyway so the lighting helped relaxation. I was in a half-open-eyes, relaxed, might-pass-out-at-any-time state myself.
"Mhm?"
I smiled for a second at the sleepy tone of her voice, but my face fell quick enough as I continued. "What the hell are we going to do? I really wish I didn't have to ask, but I do."
She sighed. "It's sort of funny," she said. "I was thinking about the same thing. I was just kind of wondering if you would ask first." She rolled her eyes up to look at me and gave me another half-hearted sort of sad smile.
"And I was wondering if you would," I agreed. "One way or the other, one of us had to burst the bubble."
"Well, Jakey," she said, "I think the first thing we've got to tackle is -"
She was cut off by the call from downstairs. "Dinner!"
"Exactly," she agreed with a laugh. Apparently she was paying more attention to the time than I was and knew that would be an immediate trial. "Oh my god," she sort of groan-whined, burying her face in her free left hand.
"What," I asked, worried.
"Dad," she replied. "All this time and his part in this never even crossed my mind."
" 'His part' in 'this'? Elaborate," I asked with a chuckle and a smirk.
"How he's going to react," she said. "How he'll feel about it."
"Okay," I said, still smirking. "You elaborated on half, but what exactly is 'this'?"
"Well, I mean, um," she said, "if our mutual - if not unorthodox and taboo-pushing - feelings were to lead to, y'know, something. That would be the 'this'."
"But, right now? What is 'this' right now?" I knew that question was the reason she was hedging at first. She wasn't sure, neither was I, but I felt like it needed explanation.
"Well," she said, but caught there. She sighed. "At this point I think 'this' is just us with our basic feelings out in the open - to each other, I mean. And I think what we have to do is make it through dinner and whatever tonight without things being weird -"
"Without dad suspecting anything is different," I clarified. The fact of us both calling him dad was a little nagging back-of-my-mind thing that had just begun nagging. As if I didn't expect this whole thing to be weird.
"Yeah. Then we'll try to figure things out tomorrow," she said. "Who knows how that will go, but we'll try."
We stood together and I gave her another, longer peck on the top of her head before hesitantly dropping my arm from her shoulder and unlacing our fingers.