Author's Note: Hello and welcome to Smoke Signals. It is important to note that this is a NIAN story. I am planning to publish short snippets into their lives in the present context. Fair warning, it will be angsty. If you prefer more of a lighthearted fluffy fic, I suggest you head on over to my other Nian piece-Heartbeats. I have a general idea about how I want this to play out, but please drop a comment if you have any ideas and let me know what you think by reviewing!
Chapter 1: Sadness
She's not fond of games, and yet, somehow her whole life has become one. She won't admit it to herself, of course. That would be entirely too pathetic. Instead, she prefers to call it "doing what has to be done." Moves and countermoves.
She drunk dials him on accident one night and if he didn't immediately recognize the familiar boozed-up lilt in her voice, he might've mistaken her inebriation for tenderness. "We never get to talk anymore…" Her voice trails off like she's expecting him to fill in the blanks. He knows he shouldn't bore her with the dull details of his life, hell, he shouldn't have even answered her call, but he can't seem to help himself, not knowing when or if he will be afforded the opportunity to speak freely with her again.
"So you're doing well?" She asks after he's filled her in on pretty much every detail of his life. He can't help but sense that its not so much the alcohol talking anymore.
"You could say that." He smiles in spite of himself, touched by her consideration.
"I'm not." She deadpans before he even has a chance to ask her. But she doesn't elaborate.
After a while, conversation drifts off and the time comes to hang up the phone but neither have the heart to do it, so they just sit there breathing in each other's presence for the longest time. It's strangely intimate, she thinks, and she revels in the simplicity of it as though she were lying in his arms.
"I miss you," he breathes out after a lengthy period of silence, and if she weren't hanging on his every breath, she would've missed it.
"I miss you too." Her response is more solid, more sure, until she realizes what she's done, calling him, a married man, in the middle of the night, under the influence of a strange cocktail mixed with liquid courage and lingering feelings, so she hangs up the phone before she has the chance to make an even bigger fool of herself.