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Panic.
 Panic.
The air around him was heavy with alcohol and bodies, the music thumping in his ears so loud St. Clair would swear his brain was jumping with each booming pound of the bass. Him and Josh were back in Paris for a few weeks, catching up with the old gang from SOAP; although, Josh had f***ed off with Rashmi over an hour ago and Anna had made some bullsh*t excuse to not attend at all, even though everyone knew exactly why she wasn’t there. He’d been welcomed home with a few pats on the back and mumbled acknowledgements toward how Anna had ended up in the end but all of them completely avoided the subject of his mum. Which, in a way, he was grateful for. He was meant to be having fun, enjoying the company of these people who had got him through so many things while at school. Yet, there he was, sitting at a bar alone, drink in hand. It was becoming a regular occurance.
Finally, dragged from his thoughts by the presence of a hand on his thigh, St. Clair had that familiar sense of dread wash over him, eyes flickering downward to catch a glimpse of slender fingers and dark nailpolish basked in the flickering lights of the club. He’d felt uneasy since the second he stepped off that plane, just a constant thrum of churning nausea in his stomach that he couldn’t quite shake, as if he wasn’t meant to be back there. Setting the glass onto the bar top to buy himself some time, he finally looked over, coming face to face with one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. But then that nausea was churning harder, his eyes started ringing, vision drifting down from her vibrant blue eyes and dark hair to red stained lips. Full, pouty. But red. It was the type of red someone bled for love, when their heart had been dropped to the floor and stomped on over and over, which St. Clair was sure had happened multiple times for this gorgeous girl.
He couldn’t understand what was happening, his fingers were shaking, chest tight, he felt like he was drowning. The water was rushing upward across every inch of his skin until his head was under the surface. A hand on his thigh. Red lips. Dark hair. Blue eyes. The back room of an art gallery. He couldn’t breathe, his chest was heaving against the water spilling into his lungs but nothing was coming, someone had dropped a rock into the center of his chest and he was locked there, drowning. That unknown force latching him into that chair. The girl however, was completely unphased, that slender hand riding further up his thigh and he heard her voice over the sound of the music, like an angel's trill,“Allô, mon beau.”
“Get off of me!”
St. Clair’s voice was panicked, he was scared, darkness enclosing around his vision like someone was turning out each light the closer they got to him, they were running, each footstep pounding against the concrete sounding like a scream of his name. He could hear the lilt of an American accent somewhere in the back of his mind, whispers that he was going to be okay. The blood in his veins burned, trying to remind him of the pain he could feel encasing each expanse of nerve within his body, he wasn’t going to be okay. He was never going to be okay.
His movements became frantic and scared, bruised knuckles working at pushing the offending digits off of his thigh. He couldn’t breathe, St. Clair had to leave. He had to get out of the water. Heavy feet led him off the chair, fingertips scraping their way along the length of the wall to help support himself toward the bathroom, he couldn’t find the exit, there was too much smoke, too many bodies. Each flash of colour from the lights brought another wave of panic, fingertips tearing against the brick wall as he moved, bloody and broke. The waves rushing over his ears got louder the closer and closer he got to the bathroom.
Within mere seconds, he was on his knees on the dirty club floor, retching noisily into the toilet bowl. Dark hair. Red lips. A hand on his thigh. Blue eyes. Blunt fingernails were clawing at his chest, over and over again, trying to scratch the air physically into his lungs through his shirt, heaving out gasping breath after gasping breath, the rush of tide subsiding.
He was back in the club, the sound of the French pop music outside louder, and louder as the water descended but he swore he could feel the ghost of a hand still touching his thigh as tears fell freely down his cheeks. A small broken whisper slipping past his lips,“Please don’t touch me.”
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