I'm not sure how I feel about this particular one-shot. I kept reading it over and over and finally I thought Okay, I need to just post the damn thing. Takes place some time between the sessions 23 and 24.
I hope you like it.
ssg.x.
He knows more than he lets on.
He knows the colour of her eyes. Not just the green. He knows the entire spectrum of her sadness. He knows the vivid rainbow of her anger.
He noticed a long time ago she has no real scent. He always found it a little strange. Spooky. Women have scents. People have scents. Who doesn't have a scent?
Ghosts. Ghosts don't have scents.
He knows she's not a ghost because ghosts aren't afraid of the dark and she is. He recognizes the fear in her when night comes, can hear the sound of goosebumps rising on her thighs and up her arms from metres away. He leaves the light in his room on for her when the ship is at its darkest. He waits for her to disappear into her room, waits for her to fall asleep before flipping the switch by his door, plunging them both into cool blackness.
He savours a cigarette, flips through an old paperback, watches the stars or watches her move beneath her sheets through the sliver her door allows him.
Sometimes she moans. Some nights it's the sound of her nightmares that keeps him awake. Other nights it's another sort of moan. A dream is just a dream, but what's the opposite of a nightmare? Both breeds of sound move along his spine in such a way it makes him shiver. Despite the cold it makes him sweat.
He won't turn out the lights until he knows she's asleep. He knows (she doesn't) that she likes to fall asleep with him lying at her feet, even though it's only his shadow.
He has a quiet evening, a quiet night. His mind silent, his body still. He can hear her taking air into her lungs, releasing it through her lips.
He knows she has soft lips. He watches her eating sometimes. He watches her bite into the cushion of her bottom lip when she's said something she regrets moments later or when she's accidentally brushed against his chest on her way to the kitchen, or when the very tips of her fingers connect with his as she takes an offered cigarette. He knows (she doesn't) that he doesn't mind the silly things she says. He doesn't even really think they're all that silly. And he doesn't mind that she touches him.
He doesn't tell her that, though. He wonders sometimes why she doesn't wise up to it herself. And he wonders what he'd do if she ever did.
He had a quiet evening, a quiet night. His mind silent, his body still.
He doesn't seem to realize that he's been staring at her staring back at him for an infinite measure of time. Infinite only because they've both realized their mistake far too late.
She's sitting at the foot of her bed in a white t-shirt. Her legs, dangling over the edge of the mattress out from under her chosen sleep attire, are whit and soft like the stars' chalky streaks against darkest, coldest space.
He can't describe how she's looking at him, how they're looking at eachother. He just knows he can't look away. It's already too late to pretend he hadn't been watching her sleeping only a moment ago, just like the time has come and gone for her to say something silly. Something stupid to keep him from looking at her the way he is just now.
Because he'd look at her (he's looking at her) and her breath would catch in her throat (her breath catches in her throat).
She lies on her stomach, head over heels; her head where her heels should be. It's already too late. Late and too late. She rests her chin against the arm folded beneath it. Her gaze never wavers. Neither does his, even when he shifts his body so that he's lying across from her, head to head but for the short distance between them. A short distance only moments ago. Now much greater.
An ocean apart. A universe. A half a century.
Looking at her he wonders what her hair might feel like. Her hair sways heavily around her heart-shaped face like velvet curtains when she walks, a murder of crows scattered when she runs, a black, powerful vortex when she spins.
His lover's hair is long and yellow, spirals down her back steadily, strong like rope. Except soft. Light and airy when it falls around his face, sweeps down the length of his chest, over his shoulders. Her eyes are clear and blue. She smells like summer.
If his lover is fresh, fragrant summer, this girl is winter. He can't smell winter coming, but he feels its approach in his bones. It awakens all his other senses. Like her, winter can be both a blessing and a curse. She makes him shiver, she clears his head. On occasion she drives him to drink.
Somewhere deep and dark inside her she understands this is both the first and last time she'll be able to look at him – study him – this way. She memorizes and places a meaning to every line, every dent, every shadow of his face. His unruly hair falls into his eyes. She can't see them –
His hand sweeps his bangs off his forehead.
There.
The dark curls stubbornly spring back into place. For a second the tiniest of smiles graces her lips. She stifles a laugh with her teeth pressed mercilessly into her lip. She has no desire to shatter this silence, this gift from a god she still has doubts ever existed. But how else could they have met this way, this very minute in time together? She doesn't know (he does) that it's her and not the hand of God that holds him to his bed tonight. She'll never know. He'll never tell.
For a moment it looked as though she might laugh at him.
Don't.
He's not sure what scares him more: being laughed at while he's feeling so vulnerable, or their silence being broken. But the smile quickly fades, she settles her chin against her arm. Her eyes close, open, slowly.
She bites her lip and his stomach dips to unexplored depths. They remain unexplored until almost the very last second of his life.
When his mind begins to wander down that road he tries to realign his thoughts with other things like ammo, food or where his next pack of cigarettes will come from. He never asks himself if it's possible to fall in love with more than one person in a single lifetime because both answers are startlingly clear and both lead to dead ends. If yes, he already has. If no, summer slowly turns to winter and winter may never thaw.
She thinks she'd melt beneath those fingers. His fingertips, knuckles, the whole of his hand would sink into her flesh, clear through her chest. Breast and bone becoming blood and water rippling around his wrist. Heart's tender, moist, raw in his palm.
His fingers are in his hair, brambles and thorn atop his head. Wrists long, thin, strong like him. The length of his bed barely accommodates him. The black t-shirt he wears is too short, like the sleeves of his blazer and the hems of his trousers. When he walks his hips are too narrow for his workpants and he's constantly working to untwist them from around his waist. God forbid he should go out and get some clothes that actually fit him. The ill-fitting clothes are a testament to his stubbornness, maybe his loyalty. Loyalty to the things he keeps closest to him even if they're bad for him. Cigarettes, blue suits, ghosts from his past.
He's a creature of habit. He has a routine. It's taken her months of careful, subtle attention, but she knows it now. She knows where to find him if she wants to, knows where to hide out when she doesn't. He rarely strays from his routine, but when he does he veers sharply off the road with earth-shattering speed and sound leaving you choking on the fumes, blinded by the dust.
She tries so hard not to look lonely. She does her nails a lot. She reads magazines. She showers at least three times a day or takes an extended bath. She tries to keep herself busy or at least look busy. She doesn't want to look lost but she is. She's lost. He knew before she'd poured her heart out to the dog that one afternoon that she didn't belong here. He stops shouting at her about always being in the shower from that day on.
When she's stomping her way through the corridors demanding food, cigarettes, or hot water he knows that she's making up for how small in size she is to everything around her by padding herself with bells and whistles, paints and powders.
Tonight, outside of her tower, she's at peace with herself. Her face is flushed, pink touching the apple of her cheek. The icy sea-green fossil of her eye rests now. He thinks he can almost hear the blood moving through her veins but it's only the blood in his ears, his heart beating in his chest that he hears. She's alive and for these few moments shared between them he believes he might be, too.
The vastness of the universe doesn't frighten her tonight. Some nights she falls asleep afraid she might slide off the end of her bed and out into space but tonight she's tethered to something strong. She feels a thread of his soul tightening around her waist, weaving itself into her hair like his arms and fingers never will.
His mouth is open, lips relaxed and quivering around deep and careful breaths.
She thinks about kissing his mouth.
He thinks about kissing her mouth.
It happens entirely by accident. He tells himself it happens entirely by accident. He could blame it on the nicotine from all those cigarettes he smoked earlier this evening or the burnt coffee. He could blame it on the lack of protein for the past two and a half weeks. He is weak and exhausted and the air they share between them tonight is cold and stale. A brain deprived of oxygen can't be held responsible for thoughts gone astray.
And so he thinks about kissing her mouth. And he thinks about touching her hair out of more than curiousity. He thinks about touching her hair, the back of her head, her neck, to bring her closer to his lips. They sink into the white sands of her skin. The fingers of his hands are spread to their full extent and across her back, clutching her around her waist. The strength of his arms and the force of his need to be inside her mouth right now, moving down her throat, filling every last pocket of space within her small, lithe body, cause her to flounder momentarily inside the circle both make around her. She's shaking against him, paralyzed before he's caught off guard by her hands come to life at her sides, humming with a need of her own against the hard, toned plane of his torso beneath his t-shirt.
Lying across from her now he's breathless. His thoughts stop short of them losing their footing, knees buckling beneath them, falling to the bed, the floor, against anything solid enough to provide them the leverage needed to climb over the walls they've built around themselves, climb into eachother.
They continue to fall but never land. They never will.
She thinks about kissing his mouth, the lids of his eyes, the crooked bridge of his nose. She thinks about kissing every one of his fingers, the knuckles that always seem to be scraped raw and red. The small, white, and angry line of an old scar between the middle and ring fingers of his left hand. The sliver of hipbone that peers over the waist of his ill-fitting workpants.
She thinks about weaving her fingers through his, squeezing, holding so tight he might never leave or have to drag her along to heaven or hell with him.
She has little over a week left. Soon he'll leave and she'll think about tonight and she'll think about her cold and empty hands. She'll think about how close she got to the thing she wanted most in this numbing, never-ending winter she's awoken to.
Someone to thaw the thing inside of her that remains frozen to this day.
They have a quiet evening, a quiet night. Their minds silent, their bodies still.
Except for the unspoken damned to eternal hellfire on their tongues.
Spike…
Faye…