In 2010, you're in a bar and you're on the verge of a decision.

You can go back outside, go to your car. Drive home, get back in bed and think about calling Johanna again. She broke up with you, not the other way around, and it still hurts right in your chest when you think about her and what she said. You could spend the whole night thinking about it and then decide not to do it and just turn on the television and watch supernatural reruns again.

Or you can take a chance and talk to this guy across the bar who's there with the other army guys. You've never interacted much with army guys; they usually seem the same to you, haircuts and stupid jokes mingled with authority and authority hasn't ever been something you've gotten along with.

Except he keeps looking at you and hasn't done one of those dumb guy moves where they buy you a drink and expect you to come over, nor has he walked over goaded by his buddies. But you look and he looks, and eventually, you raise your eyebrows at him, expectantly.

He grins back, and then he's sliding beside you at the bar, tall but not too tall, arm on the bartop, and he sounds like someone from the movies with his accent.

He makes you roll your eyes, and laugh.

You don't go to his place. He comes to yours.

And usually, you kick guys out before the night is through. But his fingers and mouth do a little more than anticipated, so you let him share the bed with you. You don't really do flings, but a fling could be nice, and he isn't Johanna.

Except, you don't lose his number. You don't just roll over and forget. You keep calling him, keep meeting him: at the bar, at the cantina where you can hardly hear each other over the music and you both dance until you both wind up stumbling to your place. Sometimes, yeah, you have sex, but sometimes, you listen to him talk about swimming in oceans halfway around the world or describing how to make the perfect fish fillet or talking about his father.

And you talk back: telling him about the time you sang for a Hole cover band for a week in Albuquerque, what it was like to fly down a Montana road in a TransAm at 150 mph, what it was like to be pregnant and sixteen, trying to figure out what to do when your mother and father both seemed to abandon you.

Eventually, you start sleeping at his place. You learn how picky he can be with food or things he likes, how to deal with him being so impatient and impulsive just as he learns how to somehow pull secrets out of you like it's nothing, how he seems to understand that you're not as strong as you think you have to be.

You're afraid that this is probably too good, being able to wake up next to him and not want to pull away. You don't even feel upset when you watch him punch your father's lights out in the middle of a party; you've never had anyone who's loved you fight for you.

You're afraid of the wrong thing. You're afraid of other people when you should be afraid of yourself: of the expectations you set for yourself, of the disconnect you feel when you're alone, of the folder sitting in your desk that has your real father's name inside and the ache that you might not belong anywhere, even when you're happy.

You start to take things for granted.

In 2011, you find that you haven't climbed into bed with him in weeks. It's been endless rounds of flights, no one to come home to, dropped calls and silences. You can't even remember when's the last time you slept in your bed.

It's been deadlines, balancing books. Meeting after meeting. Talk of upward mobility and promotions, and it's either this or take a look in the mirror at circles beneath your eyes that mirror your mother's.

You have a choice, even though you think otherwise.

You could call him, you could sit down and talk to him until you're hoarse. You could take a plane home, take the sabbatical that you're owed. You could hold his hand, you could talk. You could figure out why you're pulling away, about why things have become so much harder. You could go back to therapy and admit that you're turning into your mother and you hate it but you don't know how to stop or to confront what's been nipping at your heels. You don't want to think about the fact that the family photos look better without you in them, that you still dream about the snowstorm, that hitting your dad wasn't enough when he still forgets your own birthday, that your mother is made of stone and you want anything other than those stupid formal chats where she praises you for giving up on everything you ever liked.

You could tell him that you love him and that you don't know what to do anymore. That things are difficult and you don't want to show that, you don't want him to know how bad it really is. That you want his hands on your shoulders and arms around you, it's just that you might need it too much. You should be able to do this on your own, you should be able to keep yourself up. Johanna's words instead come back to you: You're such a difficult person to love.

You swallow everything up. Haven't you been doing this for years, before him? You can do it again, he shouldn't have to hear this. Who wants to hear this?

Later, you'll want to yell at yourself that he does. You'll want to take back the argument, the closed door, the anger, and the words, We should just break up already.

It'll be too late by then. You'll be in a hotel in Amsterdam turning the water up so hot that it's scalding you, not knowing that he's signed up for another round overseas. You'll move out when you get home anyway, and you have meetings to make.

You chose work and bottling up. It's going to be like that for years, going through beds, relationships, people. It won't feel so easy. You won't let any of it out, and you'll think to yourself, who wants that, anyway?

(In 2015, when you back to move to Boston, you find his favorite shirt. The one you wore when he held you in the closet, talking about Teddy at one-am, and you told him you loved him for the first time. You should mail it back. You don't; you wear it into Boston. You're never going to find him again, so what's one shirt?)

In 2017, you are standing against the wall, looking at him, away from the stage. Your face is caked in makeup, your hair is heavy from the way it's been made up, and you can hear his thoughts in your head.

They aren't really what you expected, and you're still not even sure if you should be listening. It's still overwhelming to even see that he's here, in Boston. He's changed, but not in the way you have: where you closed up before only to be forced to be privy to everyone's thoughts, he's been an open wound that no one else has heard.

The little control you've achieved is honestly nothing when you're close enough to touch, wearing the jacket he put on your shoulders, able to hear everything you hadn't been willing to hear, and hadn't known.

You should stop; and you don't. You can feel this pain at a clip, can read between the lines, and even though you understand that you don't necessarily deserve this...

You decide to do what you should have done years ago. You decide to sit down and talk to him, about everything.

And even you can't deny that when you both finally sit down, donuts and coffee between you, that telling the truth to someone who isn't your therapist, someone who's actually known you before you donned dresses with floral patterns and a smile you never felt reached your eyes, feels relieving. You even almost believe him when he says that it's bullshit to have gone so far for a family that doesn't know you and insists they'd want you for you.

Even if you don't believe that, having him here, having this feels so much better than it had years before.

And you think it'd stop there. Donuts and coffee.

It doesn't. How can it when you let him touch your hand again, and it feels so familiar and loving?

You should have seen this coming: his arms around your waist, fingers buried in his air, and relief and that longing you couldn't quite get rid of coming to life again. You should have known that being honest with him meant being honest with the fact that you wanted to have a second chance with him.

Maybe you don't deserve this. But that doesn't stop you from wanting it, from longing. it's not as if it's ever stopped you before -- isn't the whole reason you moved here was to go after something you longed for and couldn't have? And you know he wants this too -- he never stopped.

You're not sure if you stopped, either. It's not just your body and his; that part is almost easiest. It's the impatience, the honesty, the fact that he's cared about you, genuinely. Before you took it for granted, even questioned it.

Not anymore. You can hear it, feel it, know it.

Maybe Johanna is right. You are difficult to love. But you are still loved.

It's 2018, and things have changed even more. You both share bodies with people neither of you have met, but you've become. You've woken up to strange weather and bruises on your body so bad that people avert their eyes in public, and he tells you about memories of someone else like him.

It matters, it does. Those missing weeks, the powers, they're all changing everything.

But it doesn't change how you feel about him here and now, sitting on a bench, biting into street tacos, watching the ocean as it hits the shore. Not in any way that matters.

Your knees knock together, able to feel his thoughts against yours, laughing when a piece of shrimp falls out of his taco. You use your powers to keep it from hitting the ground, popping it in your mouth as he watches.

He's not the same person, and it isn't just the scar on his wrist or Arthur Curry. The ring on your finger and the necklace you have don't change the fact that everything, here and now, is fragile. You still want to have the year together, a real year together before either of you agree to a wedding. Both of you deserve that, before going further.

It won't be easy, probably. There's still things unresolved, from your son to the family you still haven't approached.

It's just that, well. Sitting here, eating tacos and teasing each other, making plans for dinner and cake, feels like everything you've wanted. Even if it's not quite what you imagined, even if it wasn't easily won... it feels damn near perfect.

It feels worth fighting for.

You take his hand, and it feels right.