He shoves his hands into his pockets, uncomfortable out of uniform, away from the protection it provides. It's an illusion, of course; the uniform makes him a bigger target, a better one. Something to aim at.

The curtain moves one last time and then stills, falling back to the center. He keeps staring at it until the door opens and she stands there, looking at him with eyes as wounded as the people he's left behind.

No, John. The people you left behind are dead.

"What do you want?" Her voice is hoarse and painful, and he wonders if she's talked to Neil or confronted Neil or if throwing everything in John's face was enough. If Minka's death bought forgiveness or at least peace. As far as John can tell, no one accepts death as a payment for peace, but maybe currency is different here.

"Nothing." He doesn't want anything. He wants everything. He wants peace and forgiveness and forgetting. He wants everything he can't have and certainly nothing Emma can give him.

She stares at him as if he's something she's never seen before, not the same bloke that is her fiancé's best mate, not the same bloke that she'd known for years, not the same bloke she'd yelled and screamed at in her kitchen not that long ago. "Neil's not home."

"I know."

She nods and stares at him, neither of them moving from the spots they're rooted to, his feet hard and flat on the cracked cement walk and hers firmly on the top step of the little place she owns with Neil, their home.

"Come in." When she speaks, it's like an explosion in his ears. Loud, roaring and then silence where nothing comes through except the voice in his head. But she says the words in the way she knows he'll hear them; making them, however softly spoken, an order.

His feet move of their own accord, across the cement to the walkway, up the steps to where she stands in the door, not moving. She looks at him with wide eyes and a sad expression and then reaches out, her hand brushing at the dark circle beneath his eye.

"Oh, John."

It's the break in her voice that does it, he tells himself. Breaks him. His hands thread into her hair, twisting in the strands as he pushes her body back, pulling her face forward, finding her lips with his own. She stumbles off the metal step of the door and his momentum carries them back until the wall's behind her and he's in front of her and he doesn't care that the whole world might peer in the open door.

She's wearing a skirt with some sort of flower pattern, and he almost thinks he can smell them, until he remembers they're nothing but fabric and his olfactory senses are burnt out on burnt flesh and death. Instead, he can feel the soft material pile and collect in his fingers as he bunches it in his hands, tugging it up from where it sweeps against her ankles.

He shifts his body so the pressure of him against her holds the fabric in place, his hand sliding down to the velvet softness of her thighs. She gasps and moans in his ear, her mouth pressed against it as her hands fist in his short hair, tugging hard as her hips angle out toward his. His fingers splay on her skin and he turns his head, needing to silence everything he can't hear with a kiss, his tongue pushing past her willing lips as his fingers repeat the gesture, evading her knickers to find wet, warm flesh that parts easily under his assault.

She makes a slow rolling sound of pleasure against his mouth and he uses his knee to part her legs further, allow himself more access to her skin. Phantom memories wage their own war against him - memories of other flesh, of other desire, of the smell of sex and the taste of want. He matches her with a groan, sliding his fingers deeper, his thumb settling over her clitoris, stroking the hard nub until she shudders beneath him and whispers his name like a ghost on his grave.

John jerks back, panting hard as he stares at her. She's tousled and tempting and he wants more. His fingers are wet, slick as they slide across his belt and the button, fumbling to strip them away. Emma's fingers are there, brushing his aside, some of the same frantic need in him transmuting to her hands, shoving aside his belt, unfastening the button of his jeans, shoving down the zipper. John groans, forcing himself away from her again, sinking down to his knees.

There's something like prayer, something like absolution at her feet, shrouded by her skirt as it falls down around him, as he tugs down the thin, wet fabric of her knickers and finds the wet heat of her with his tongue, licking and sucking at damp skin and sensitive flesh. Emma moans above him and he can hear the sound of her nails scratching against the wall behind her, clutching at air and plaster as he parts her skin with his thumbs and tastes her, tracing the tip of his tongue over her clit again and again.

"John."

His name falls from her lips like a balm, but it burns as it lands on his skin, branding him with another black mark he can't wipe clear. Salt burns his eyes as he closes them, giving himself over to the slide of flesh. He can hear her soft sounds of pleasure, feel the spasm of muscle as she edges closer to orgasm. His mind bends them, bends everything, until the cries are those of dying children, the trembling of muscles the tightening of rigor as it sets into the skin. He gasps, needing air and instead inhaling her, and he fumbles out, away, falling back on his hands and his arse, staring up at her sex-soaked expression and drawing air in as if every breath might be his last.

Emma's hands tug at his jeans, pulling on them until his hips lift and allow her to drag them down his thighs, the fabric rough on his skin. He welcomes the pain of it almost as much as he welcomes the heat that surrounds him as she sinks down, engulfing his body in tight wetness.

Dying is warm, John thinks, surrendering as Emma moves along his length, her body clenching at his with every stroke. The blood of the dying is as warm as that of the living as it spills out and smokes across snowy ground. Emma is hot and tight and wet and he stares up at her, watching the strange shift of light across her features, watching the past play out like a movie in his mind.

Hell is warm, John thinks as he comes, collapsing back to the hardwood floor beneath him, his hips moving on instinct until he feels her release cling to his skin. She eases off of him and away from him, her eyes the color of betrayal, but he's relatively sure he's the only one who's committed that particular sin.

He dresses quickly, his body as stained as his soul, and remembers that Hell is warm, and he must not be there yet, since all his body can feel is the cold.