I was inspired by the song The A-Team by Ed Sheeran. If you haven't heard it before, listen to it.
I don't own the characters. I attach strings to them and shout, "Dance marionettes! Dance for my pleasure!"
Exposed lips, flushed face.
Slow beat, fast pace.
They say she knows nothing but the sound of a bottle breaking; of doors closing and the painful sounds of skin slapping against each other. She should rest, recuperate. Instead she stares out of windows. Bleak nights and moonlight.
She is used to lustful eyes. Hateful eyes from everywhere else. Her clothes cover her body but she wears her heart on her sleeve for the world to mock.
That is how he sees her.
She twirls in her playground, not far from where he sits and drinks his coffee (because of course he needs coffee at two in the morning) while he watches her. She laughs when it snows, shouts when it rains, cries when it's dark. She lives for the moment and at the moment, he lives for her.
He lives for now. He wakes up, rushes to work to drown himself in boredom before going to the diner, the one across the park, and wait for her. She never disappoints.
He loves watching her. She is the freedom he would love to have, the innocence and naivete of a child that he lost before he had a chance to see it. She is everything he wants, everything he could have had, and everything he has never seen. She is everything he lost. She twirls and twirls until the street lamps are lit and the moon is high in the sky. She twirls like she will never stop.
But she does stop. He sees her dejected face when she sees the moon dip over the horizon and a new day begins again. She will pout (the most adorable pout he has ever seen) and start walking. It is in a different direction each time but she never once wavers or pauses.
He can't follow her. He has to go back to the bleak and lonely apartment where he is reminded of shrill screams and gray walls and the sound of leather against skin. Where the sun will once again rise and fall and he will be back here again; on time and without fail.
He thinks he will never get rid of these memories.
He is right