Reverie and That Song She Sings

Part 3

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When Midnight Comes Around

I kept my stare clinging to the floor in my own private twisting of bantam hells. Maybe I was susceptible to this feeling around him. It felt as if a petite fairy had broken free of its icy coffin to dance and flutter about inside. She wouldn't care that the cold splinters bore into the balls of her feet, or that her blood smeared the floor as she waltzed and twisted around in her dance. She was alive, and knew that her body thrived with such things, and for that she danced.

I want to dance as well.

"Well?"

His voice pulled me back to that place abruptly. I pressed the insides of my lips together as my mind quickly tried to correct the jump still leftover in my skin. Pressed for the length of my silence, I simply blurted.

"I lied. You don't snore."

I watched his shoes for another shift in posture. It came as it would when he relaxed against the wall even more than he had been a moment earlier to that. His soft exhale of breath made me realize what air I held in my own chest. I let it out slowly; my inhaling was sharper and carried more of its quick sound with a rugged pattern.

"I don't, huh?" he blew out smoke, " I should've known, otherwise our friendly Mr. Black would've spaced my ass a long time ago," he said with the beginnings of a sly smile. I cracked my own grin. Then we both laughed at his casual words. Chuckles fell from us like eager candy from pockets this time.

We regained our composure with a single look from the both of us. We were both smiling, and this is where I hid the butterflies that flittered about and nipped at the insides. "Jet's too sentimental to do that to you. You guys get along like brothers," I said, a tiny snip of envy forming, but not resting behind my words. I wish Spike would get so close to me sometimes that we would have inside jokes like he and Jet had.

Be closer than brothers are…

"Brothers? Right…"

He was obviously pointing out the fact that they had squabbles or that Spike acted outrageous, or stupid, or even both, while Jet always tried to think everything out. I raised an eyebrow slightly. "Hey, I didn't say that brothers never fight," I retaliated with a gritty tone mixed into every syllable.

"True."

He puffed on his cigarette some more, slender fingers pinching it somewhere between the glowing embers and his lips. They seemed to curve carefully around it and hold it with just the right pressure between the two that held the smoke.

It looks like you've painted your whole life with those hands…

Suddenly, a loud metal clang echoed down the halls, as well as a deep-throated guttural cry of pain, that quickly caught a pair of attentions.

"I guess Jet's awake," he said, still casting an amused glance at where the sound had come. I snorted.

"Are you so sure he's awake?"

Spike glanced at me, then back down the steel corridor. "Well, maybe after that pan dropped on his foot. Besides," his mouth slid up into a sarcastic smile, "he can't fix his magically delicious bellpeppers and beef—without the beef—while he's asleep," he said. I grunted. "His food usually tastes like he made it while he was asleep."

"Yeah, I know."

After barely a moment, he pushed away from the wall and turned from me and started off.

Wait! Where are you going?

My mind cried this with the contempt of a spoiled child.

He stopped in mid-step. My heart jumped.

"Gotta make sure Jet doesn't set the place on fire," he said, still facing forward. Then he began his walk once more, leaving me to stand there like a simple heart, and to turn from this place when my mind fell off course.

I went back to my room.

Back to my sanctuary.

I took out the headband and lay it on the dresser. I caught the eyes staring back at me, my twenty-three year old eyes. More guilt bubbled up from inside my chest to deposit itself deep in my ribs.

I should've died on that day.

Should've died so long ago…

I took up the brush and ran it through my hair, against the palm of my hand holding the locks up and away from my neck. I closed my eyes to take a small amount of pleasure in being alone for the first time in a few hours. Alone and quiet.

The quiet seemed to slip around my waist like lover's arms, soft to take comfort in. I could barely feel the ghost of Whitney's warmth fold around me. It was an old instinct still held, but I didn't like it here. It hadn't felt right since I pulled the bottle of lies from beneath the sand to read the list inside.

Damn men… always lie to you. No good for you in any way or form…

I shook my head. I needed new thoughts. Something better so I could ride the path that the serenity had shone me towards.

However, something jarred me back to the placement of reality with a sharp breath in. I snapped my eyes open and turned quickly to the door, the click of the tumblers what had caught my ears.

"Just me," he said with the slightest evidence. He shut the door behind him, everything clicking into place as it did. Then he stepped away from the door. "What are you doing in here?" I asked, the tiniest touch of aggravation sliding off my tongue. He ignored my tone.

He didn't answer me, either, as he cast a glance at my unmade bed before slumping down on the muffed mattress. It was only then that he shrugged. "To talk I suppose," he said, quite ill normally. I accepted his answer, with only a curious look from my behalf, and went back to brushing my hair. This time I was watching him through the mirror.

He just rather sat there, eyes resting on the soles of his weathered boots.

I spoke first.

"So what is the stuff that Jet's about to serve up?" I asked. He looked in my direction with an amused expression. "He told me it was fried noodles with broccoli and peppers, but I probably couldn't tell the difference between his cooking and bird shit on rye," he said. I snickered, trying to steady the brush as I both laughed and attempted even strokes.

That's when I caught him.

He was watching me through the mirror. I saw him, he saw me. This vision lock proved to be as incriminating as gloves and knives between us. I could feel the red as it reared its bright head through my cheeks. This embarrassing drive had the feel of downing a dozen candies at once, as well as the quickened heart and the caught lungs. While we were frozen in our captures, I realized it.

He isn't dreaming.

No, those eyes hadn't wandered off into an entanglement of memories. He hadn't roused out his grey past in order to look at me through the mirror. He was here. He was now.

He stood and took small steps towards me, never taking his eyes from the reflection of mine. I realized that I had stopped brushing my hair, not that I minded it too much though.

He stood behind me, barely a few inches away. I could feel the heat from him fold across the bare skin of my back. He shifted his weight onto one foot.

I dropped the hairbrush.

A loud clang sounded its cry on the steel floor. It echoed back from the corners near my bed and beneath our feet.

For eternity, neither of us moved. We just looked at each other's reflection in my mirror.

Then he bent down to scoop up the fallen brush. I held out my hand to receive it, but all he did was ignore my open palm. He pulled it up and took it down, separating my hair gently. Then he repeated his motions to brush through the rest of my hair. The motion was so soft, so gentle. I felt it inside a closed memory, then lost it again in the whirlpool. I closed my eyes and let him run the brush down it.

Then, abruptly, he ceased to stroke it down, and I opened my eyes to meet his again. We matched and met our faces, but expressions were not the same. They didn't reflect each other.

I don't care… He's not dreaming.

He sees me. That's all I care about.

Jesus, I'm selfish.

His arms folded down and around the phantom limbs of Whitney, overwriting them and creating a new path in the old erase. He moved his hands up, up and through a sheen of plum. His fingers ran tenderly along my scalp. Through this, he continued to look directly into my eyes, as if the windows of my soul were a theater show, and he might miss something if he looked away. Then he cupped my chin in his palm and slowly turned my face towards his.

And he kissed me.

It wasn't as thrilling as the one I had given while he slept. It was more so. My body beamed with a light that must've been borne of heaven. His other hand made a slow journey to support me from the small of my back. He pulled me to him, as if he was letting me in on the secret of his heartbeat. It pulsed up and through our clothes and pressed onto my skin. It was smooth as saxophone, and gentle as wind. It laced itself through me eternally. It felt like another swirl of dream.

Still, as I knew that every bit of this moment was real, I wondered. I wondered if he was really seeing me, there, sitting in my room in a nightgown that was straddling the line between taste and trash with his hands in my hair. Could this cowboy see me, or that past he longed for? Was I real or a mold for a memory?

I couldn't stand it. I tore myself from a shredded paradise. Then I looked straight into his reverence through the movements I cloudily felt in this heat, this guilt and rupture.

"Am I Faye or her?"

My tongue produced that flop and he froze stiffly under the pressure of my fingers, almost the same as if I had uttered her name instead of a flexible pronoun.

"What…?"

"Which am I?"

Then time tumbled and stopped as he didn't answer and his expression halted in an emotion mixed as confusion, with only a sprinkle of love mixed in behind a sheer curtain of irises. Our words glided soft on the surface of air.

"What do you mean?"

"I want to know who appears in your eyes."

Time's clumsy walk went on as it passed in a colorless siren. Then I felt his hands pull out of my hair. I felt the exit of his warm hands against my spine. The heartbeat began to unravel the begun stitches. He stood back.

What have you done Faye?

What have you done Faye?

What have you done Faye?

Carnivorous sunshine on my eyes

Cavernous rainbow in my mouth to size

Tiger thighs not made for you to realize

(I am woman.)

Rough and tough scramble, my brain

Too course for soft hands to grope and strain

Too frail for glowing red poker to skewer and maim

(I am woman.)

The mini-poem is mine.

This one is rather long, and a bit different. If the style seems choppy then I apologize.

In this part, I left Faye's thoughts alone mostly, because she was speaking a lot, and because the scenes usually spoke for themselves. The next part will resume what preceded this.