HELLO HELLO HELLO!!!! IT'S TIME! AT LAST!!! Thank you so much for all the super lovely comments, I promise I will eventually get around to replying to everything- I am seeing them all and just, I love you guys. I'll do all my proper thank yous on the epilogue but for now, I'll just say THANK YOU SO MUCH to anyone who's stuck with 'invincible' this far, you're so encouraging and wonderful.
Song for this chap is 'first day of my life' by bright eyes, one of the few songs with the power to reduce me to tears when I'm feeling emotional.
ALSO: i don't think I'd call this smut exactly seeing as it gets metaphorical before anything gets explicit (u'll see what I mean) but this is the closest to smut this book has got. SO if anyone thinks they might feel uncomfortable and doesn't wanna read it (and if you've been one of my longstanding readers), don't worry, please just pm me and I'll be sure to write you a more PG version after my exams. Don't want anyone missing out on the end! <———-IMPORTANT
epilogue will be posted once my exams are done, ie. post-17th June.
So, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO- here is the final chap.
***
That night was different from the rest. They were quiet as they brushed their teeth; quiet as they got into bed and lay facing each other, feeling that something momentous had shifted.
Jared reached out and caught Isaac's wrist with a circlet of fingers, brought it up and kissed the fragile part of it where the veins showed through. When he looked up Isaac was staring at him with something almost pained in his eyes, something dark and vulnerable and wounded. He blinked, slowly, and his bottom lashes clumped with wetness.
"Fuck," said Jared, shifting closer and raising thumbs to Isaac's face. "Are you- don't cry. What's wrong?"
Isaac huffed out a laugh.
"Nothing. Everything's right. Perfect. It's a little- overwhelming."
"You want me to back off?" asked Jared.
A hand caught the soft hair at the nape of his neck, sending a shiver all through him.
"No," came Isaac's voice in the dark warmth of his ear. There was a shy touch like a kitten lick to the shell of his ear and he was trying to catch his breath and then suddenly he'd been flipped onto his back, Isaac straddling his hips and looking down at him in wonder.
"I-" Jared began, but his mouth was dry and he could say no more. He was only vaguely aware of his lips trembling open as Isaac leant forward to brush a soft kiss against them.
"You're shivering," Isaac told him, sounding gently amused. He held up Jared's hand to show him and then gazed at it, curious, before pressing his lips to the palm and flicking his tongue out, kissing open-mouthed down to the pulse point. "Fuck," he whispered then, and his breath on Jared's damp skin flipped Jared's mind upside down, made him let out this embarrassing broken-off little whine.
"Aw, J, baby," answered Isaac, voice soft and low. "It's okay. Sh, sh, J, you're okay. Let me take care of you for once."
His long fingers were everywhere, soothing down Jared's arms, up his neck, tangling in his hair. He leaned forward with that devastating smile and placed a chaste kiss on Jared's forehead, smoothing his hair back and murmuring happily,
"You are so gorgeous, J, you don't even know."
Jared couldn't help but smile back at him; couldn't help but strain up to kiss him and mumble,
"You're an idiot," against his lips. Isaac grinned, lopsided and adorable, hair sticking up all over the place- and Jared thought mine, mine, mine, wishing for Isaac to never let him go, to keep him forever tangled and helpless beneath him. "I love you," he said again, voice raw.
Isaac's eyes fluttered closed at that, lashes soft and dark against his cheeks as he breathed in, out. Steadied himself. When his eyes opened they seemed somehow darker, pupils dilated and whiskey-brown irises bottomless, terrifying in a way because Jared was caught in them; felt the dizziness that came with utterly losing one's hold on the earth. Isaac reached to capture his wrists above his head and whispered in his ear like a secret,
"Idiot." And then, "Off, off," as he tugged at Jared's top, frowning a little and biting his bottom lip in determination.
Jared shifted himself up and took it off, then reached for the hem of Isaac's. Isaac's eyes snapped over from Jared's chest to his hands, and for the first time he looked hesitant, unsure.
"You're beautiful," whispered Jared, reaching a hand up to turn Isaac's gaze towards his face. "You're beautiful, Isaac; every fucking little bit of you."
He could almost see the conflict going on in Isaac's eyes and then Isaac reached down and pulled his shirt slowly over his head, dropping it down on the bed and searching hurriedly for reassurance, pale and flawed and gorgeous with his soft-smooth skin and slender throat. Jared ran his hands over Isaac's collarbone and down his arms to where they both knew was covered in old scars, and he nuzzled there with his nose and lips and said,
"I love you, I love you," wanting to shield him from everything, this fallen angel whose heart was so big and powerful under that fragile skin.
Isaac caught his shoulders then with a little mewl, and pulled him up into a kiss- a breathless, frantic, rollercoaster kiss that made him shudder involuntarily as Isaac drew back slightly, mouth open and kiss-swollen, only to roll his hips forward and make Jared fucking cry out, gasping and wide-eyed in his arms.
And after that it was blurry and beautiful, a mess of feelings and touches and everything, all at once, like all the colours Jared had ever seen were in his eyes and in his mind, all encapsulated in this electric fucking hurricane of a boy. There was Isaac's laugh in his ears, Isaac's eyes swallowing him, Isaac's hands pulling him back from the brink; grounding him. Isaac was light, dark, everything, a haze of shadows and lightning in startling clarity. Jared never wanted to catch his breath again.
"I love you too, you know," whispered Isaac later, when they were drifting to sleep. "Obviously."
Jared's eyes had just been closing and now he blinked them sleepily open and smiled, Isaac's gaze on him like twin stars in the moonlight.
"Not as much as I love you," he mumbled teasingly, and watched with a warm feeling in his stomach as an exasperated, lopsided grin spread over Isaac's face.
"Not doing this now, idiot," he huffed back, flicking Jared gently on the forehead. "Way too tired to argue."
"S'okay," Jared said, eyes already closing again as he pulled Isaac closer. "We've got- plenty'f time."
Five minutes had passed before Isaac spoke again.
"I do love you more, though," he said, unable to help himself. When he turned his face, however, he found Jared already fast asleep with his soft snores half-muffled by the pillow. He smiled at that, letting his own eyes close once more and feeling Jared's breaths against his skin, Jared's pulse against his.
They slept curled up together, close as always, and their fingers and heartstrings were so tangled up that it wasn't clear whose was whose.