A/N: Written for the Mega Prompts Challenge, word prompt #141 - glamourous.
Adventures Falling From the Sky
She belonged on the stage, but lately, something about her image there seemed…washed out.
He knew her. He knew her well and that was why he saw that. Saw something slowly disappear, saw nothing slither in to replace it. If he had to put words to it, he'd say it was the impulse of youth slipping away, and the emptiness was an adulthood that hadn't been accompanied by something precious to survive the change.
He could say that, because he could feel his own body similarly changing.
'Do you,' he said, almost idly, one day, 'wonder if you've made the wrong decision?'
She twirled a lock of hair. It was purple that day. It changed every few weeks but she managed to make each and every shade look like it belonged there, on her head.
'Not really,' she said, after a pause. 'I do love what I do. It's just…exhausting.'
Maybe that was the word he'd been looking for. There was no end to anything once adulthood came. Responsibilities and jobs and education that didn't stop once you graduated school, that wasn't measured by homework assignments and exams. Reality that didn't quite live up to the never-ending sparkle in dreams.
'Do all adults feel this way?' she wondered aloud. 'It was all glamourous before. I wanted to be a model. You a doctor. And us a couple madly in love forever…'
'Aren't we still in love?' He sat up suddenly, worried.
She simply sipped at her tea. 'I think we are,' she said, her tone with a hint of vagueness in it. 'Do you ever feel like you've wasted your youth?'
'Wasted?' he repeated. Sure, he probably went to more classes than he strictly needed in the long run, and probably wasted more time daydreaming than was strictly necessary as well, but he wasn't sure he'd call any of it wasted.
'Like, we could have been on an adventure,' she clarified. 'Doing something life-changing. Life's been simple for the both of us.'
He wasn't sure he'd call things simple either. But it was true that they'd both had pretty straightforward lives, and straightforward careers. There'd been her, beautiful since birth, contracted while she was still in high school and spun into a star before the world could get tired of seeing her face. And then there was him, born into a family of doctors and carrying expectations of being a doctor and then actually becoming one… No, they hadn't had anything that could count as an adventure. They'd even been high school sweethearts. It had been no surprise when he'd proposed and she'd accepted.
'Adventures don't fall out of the sky, I suppose,' he said, finally. 'I'm not sure we're made for adventures anyway.'
'You never know.' She let go of her hair, then reconsidered. 'No, I don't suppose adventure does fall out of the sky.'