It occurred to him, right then, just how fucking Hollywood they looked.
The two of them, misted in the pale moonlight and post-coital bliss; sheets draped around their hips; her leg crooked across his own, her small hand tracing the scars on his chest - and, of course, the obligatory cigarette resting between his lips. Were he not so relaxed, so uncharacteristically peaceful, he'd have gone without it by way of a small fuck you to the romanticised conventionality that exasperated him so much. As it was, he took another drag and sighed softly.
They watched the smoke diffuse into nothingness against the ceiling, and Noriko shifted; he loosened his arm around her cool, damp body until she settled, blinking up at him from where her chin rested on his shoulder. Shogo traced the line of her back from between her shoulder blades to the dimples at the base of her spine, and she shivered, closing her eyes.
Shogo wanted to tell her that she was beautiful like this, rumpled and naked and content alongside him - but he wasn't good with words. He'd never actually got around to telling her that she was beautiful, and he was damned if she wasn't beautiful all the time.
When she read, curled up in her favourite chair, head bowed as she nibbled her lip, lost in the stories she held in her hands. When she worked, twiddling endlessly, patiently, with different camera positions to get the perfect angle, the perfect light. When she slept, breathing softly on her side, individual strands of hair strewn across her face. When she rocked above him, her hands scrabbling for purchase on his shoulders, her mouth gasping inches from his as he holds this intelligent, brilliant, achingly beautiful girl who, for reasons known only to her, chose him.
Roused from his thoughts by small, soft lips pressing against his own, Shogo wondered (not for the first time) what she saw in him.
As if she sensed his insecurity, Noriko kissed him harder and slipped her arms around his neck, holding him tight to her.
It was in the clichéd, "tried and tested" things that she loved him most. The good morning kisses, the goodnight kisses, and all the kisses in between; the notes he left around, reminding her there were leftovers in the fridge, or that she had an appointment at eleven, or that she was "smokin' hot" in her new dress; the particular effort he made to impress her parents when they visited, from meticulously ironing his shirt, to reigning in his colourful vocabulary; the way he watched her when he thought she wasn't looking, when all his features were softened and his whole being was alighted with unspoken love, when she felt she was overflowing with gratitude for whatever God had led him to want her.
As they moved with one another again in familiar synchronicity, as the other's name escaped their mouths in short, quick gasps, as they pressed their foreheads together while they caught their breath, Noriko smiled in the joy of the wonderful, perfect piece of existence they shared - and as Shogo lit another cigarette, he thought that, maybe, clichés weren't so bad after all.
Greetings, friends! Thank you for reading my brainvomit!
Please review! Stoke my self-esteem or destroy it forever, the power is yours.
Have you read Infected? You should read Infected. It's not terrible.