AN: After reading Phollie's latest chapter of Trails of Fire, I was hit with a mad wave of Matt-Love. This snippet is the product of late-night-fan-girling, and I shamefully love it. Enjoy!
The first girl that Matt ever loved spoke to him in French. The first time he saw her, he thought she was a cloud of his own smoke. She wasn't exactly a waif of a girl - rather, a full blown, full bloom woman. One with lips as full as her hips, and an air around her that seemed fogged up with the pheromone of the way she moved.
He glimpsed her first through a window, with a finger to her lips and her dark eyes contemplating something he couldn't see, a plate of half-eaten dinner on the table in front of her. Wearing a worn-in sweater that settled over her in all the right ways and dark hair that tumbled down over her shoulder like a soft summer rain. He saw her smile at some private joke, saw her stand up from her chair and stretch out her slender body and stroll out the glass door of the diner with that fog following her and a slight bounce in her step like Matt had never seen in any other before.
And Matt just knew that he had to know her.
So he watched her walk away, ghosted his eyes over her body, and made his way after her, calling Miss! Miss, I think you dropped this! with his boots thudding the pavement and his voice carrying just far enough to cause the girl to stop and turn.
Of course, he'd just dug into his pocket for a scrap of useless paper, maybe a gum wrapper or something, the crinkle of a cigarette package covering, anything that he could hold out to her in the palm of his hand, anything that he could pretend was hers.
He saw her smile again, and then he heard her speak, and Matt felt such a surge of electricity to his skin that he felt certain it was enough to stop his heart. Any woman that feels like an electric chair with a simple I think you're mistaken, mon cher is a woman that Matt wants to get closer to.
"Take it anyway," he grins, mussing some of the hair out of his line of sight. Any one line for her to drag those fingers over any part of my skin.
But she shook her head at him, her dark hair falling about, her dark eyes glinting the same sort of grin, her aura bringing him on and pushing him off at the same time. Matt digs around in his pocket for a second, brings out a carton of smokes. Flips it open and slips one out. Buys himself some time. Just a second more to burn those eyes of hers into his brain. He needs a little motivation these days, he needs a little electricity to keep him awake in the sunlight.
C'mon, I swear I saw you drop it is muffled behind his cigarette and his persistent smile. I swear, mon cher, you are mistaken is tangled up in a laugh.
And then it's faites l'amour avec moi coming out in short gasps and twisted up in limbs and want. It's like they've always known each other in the dark, like Matt was born in the tendrils of her hair, like he thrived in the scent of her body when it felt like fire under his hands. It was like she came alive in between his sheets and his body, like her hands' home was knotted up in his hair, like her lips lived to feverishly plant electricity into his skin.
He didn't ask for her name. He wanted to love her without one. He only told her his so he could hear her spill it out of her mouth in a flurry of touchez moi, Matt, je vous veux en moi. And Matt hid from his life inside of her, got high on her, got wasted on her, loved her like he was sure he was never gonna love another woman again.
And that was enough for him for one night, under a summer sun that would surely look different to him in the morning. He didn't know exactly if it was enough for her, but it must've been since they never met again. She was gone on a breeze with the rising sun coming up behind her through the blinds, striping her body gold, her fog mixing with his smoke, her Vous allez me manquer getting lost in his mouth. It was when she shut the door behind her that he let his body slump into his mattress, a dull heat rising from his sheets, a languid smile sharing his mouth with a cigarette. Matt looked through the blinds at the changing sky, thinking that she was out there somewhere now, under the same colors as him. Thinking he loved her. And that it somehow wouldn't be as beautiful if she hadn't just left him here in the warm glow of early morning, sparks flowing in his veins as thick as syrup.
He'd think of her at odd moments in his life. Little things would bring her memory back. An old, black-and-white French movie on T.V, or the sun moving around the colors in the sky and sending them through his blinds, landing them on his skin. A warm breeze. A foggy morning. Useless crumples of paper. A blooming flower.
They met the way the ocean meets the shore. They parted like the sun from the horizon. All things hot and bright came together for him in that girl, on that night, between those heated breaths of words he didn't know, yet somehow understood. He'd love her until the day he died.
He'd breathe his last breath just to get some of her smoke back.
Matt takes a deep drag on his cigarette, holds the smoke in his lungs for a minute. Lets it out slowly, lets it cover him, shroud him, wrap him up.
Mutters Ahhh, l'amour with a grin.