Something I found in my documents from about a year ago that I totally forgot about... there's no plot really, just fluff :') Anyways, enjoy!
Soft sprinkles of light from the glowing sunrise slipped between the curtains to stain her skin orange-yellow. The beams bounced off her unbrushed hair, warming the golden hues in the cascading wisps that curled at her cheeks. Head tilted to greet the new day, her eyes followed the rising star melting into the grey concrete buildings, rays slinking through the gaps almost as if to reach her. Apricot fingers splayed towards the window, the light-dark contrast framed her square jawline, strengthening those harsh perpendicular angles. In a strange juxtaposition, however, her expression was soft, a childlike smile tugging up the corners of her ruby lips.
Jac Naylor loved the sunrise. It was the one thing she could rely on. At least, that was until Adrian Fletcher had stumbled into her life.
The room was an amalgamation of all things Fletch. Black-lined frames hugged precious family photos, penne pasta glued haphazardly along the border, overlaid by glitter and stickers. Clothes were strewn across the carpet, a few straggling socks lost in the seclusion of the sullen corners. Captured in a plastic volley, the shelved football trophy bore a misspelled name, half-buried under red and white flags. A freshly-pressed suit hung from the wardrobe door, sharp sleeved and lapels unrumpled. The bed occupied most of the space, maroon silk duvet bought solely for her. Now, however, it wasn't Jac that lay under it.
Fletch observed her through half-lidded eyes, hair mussed from sleep. Each soft stretch of her bare skin tightened as she shifted, its ivory colour smudged with speckled, red marks where his teeth had grazed her neck. With those, he saw flashes of sweet, sensual kisses and shaking bodies, of unspoken promises and tentative feeling. All so raw and rare and reckless in the light of day.
He wondered what ran through her mind as she stared at the sunrise. Was that regret in the slump of her shoulders? Did he see panic in her willow-branch fingertips that twitched against the windowsill?
It was then that she turned her head, and Fletch half-steeled himself for rejection. Instead, however, she nodded towards the window, silently asking for his company. This was some peculiar dance they had perfected, a strange form of communication that used no words. A look, or a motion of a hand, or some unconscious shift of their shoulders, and they knew exactly what the other needed. Their soundless language had become something of a spectacle to the likes of their colleagues, who marvelled in their complete capacity to just feel each other.
Feelings were how Fletch had found himself entangled in her arms, and why he feared he had ruined it all. Last night consumed his thoughts.
Breathing heavily, he placed a chaste kiss upon her lips and slipped out of her, moving onto his side, head cushioned by the pillow. She mirrored him, her cheeks bleached red and her half-smile threatening to become something more. Fletch reached out to fix a few hairs that had become stuck to the sheen of sweat upon her forehead, twirling the tresses between his fingers once they were free. Their eyes met and Fletch could feel the three words scratching at his throat. He could almost swallow them down, until she took his hand in hers and kissed his knuckles gently.
"I love you," he murmured.
Her eyes widened, and she watched his face as if searching for sincerity, placing his hand back onto the bed as she did so. A few seconds felt like an eternity and Fletch flinched as panic began to permeate. When she shifted, his heart sank. He expected her to run. He almost wouldn't blame her. But, instead, she tilted her head and kissed him, tentatively, gently, full of unsaid promise.
Still, he could not escape the crushing feeling inside his chest that she had not said it back.
Fletch slid out of his silk sheets and padded over to her. She seemed different now, settled with an ethereal calm, no spikes or spasms of tension in her shoulders, no frown lines burrowed into her skin. It suited her. She offered him a small smile at his arrival, soft, lips barely turning up at the edges, before turning her gaze back to the blebs of orange in the sky. He did as she did, observing both marvels of nature: the bleeding clouds and the woman herself, the light bathing her in some otherworldly kaleidoscope of colour.
They remained like this for a few quiet minutes, both uncertain and both afraid, drinking in the sunlight as if some attempt to gain strength from its rays. Fletch wondered where her love lay, and Jac wondered whether loving him was the same as hurting him.
"It reminds me of you," she murmured before she could help herself, staring resolutely at the sunset. Fletch frowned at her, the words a soft recurrence of those said last night.
Albie's was quiet, spare the gentle whoosh of whispers, gossip leaking from the hospital walls and into the bar. Donna Jackson was dipping her toe into it all, searching for that sweet titbit, that delectable delicacy of news she could chat and chatter and chinwag for the entirety of her next shift. What she didn't expect, however, was to find it in plain sight, in the laughter and the repartee of the two colleagues sitting in the rather open space not a foot from her.
Jac and Fletch were clearly a few drinks down: her hands were oddly unsteady and his London-Essex mishmash of an accent was becoming thicker, boyish and almost flirtatious. There was a bottle of red wine standing to attention on the table between them, a dribble of crimson around the neck an indication of wobbly fingers.
"It reminds me of you," Fletch murmured, lifting his glass of wine. He smirked at it goofily, as if the plum liquid were a comedian. Jac raised her eyebrows in an incredulous protest; he held his free hand up in defence. "No, right, hear me out." He returned the glass to the table and waved his fingers at it as if presenting something scintillating. "Thin, bitter, red-head that gives you a throbbing headache." He grinned, utterly pleased with his assessment, and tried not to become too distracted by his use of the word 'throbbing'. He looked up at her, almost expecting praise.
"A quicker way to a concussion is that bottle meeting your head, and, trust me, Mr Fletcher, I am nothing but efficient," she threatened lightly, her eyes glinting mischievously.
"It reminds me of you." Now he wished he could see into her eyes.
He glanced once at the rising sun and back to her. "What, pretty as a picture?" He fell back on humour, a safe-ground within his uncertainty. Still, she smiled, gave him a small shake of her head.
"No." She paused, contemplating, concentrating her words. "Bright. Lifting. Reliable." His heart swelled, twitched in his chest, and he offered her his rare gaze of adoration, soft, approachable, tunnelled as if she were the only thing here.
"I love the sunrise." And in their perfected, peculiar dance of words and motion, he knew exactly what she meant.