Collide
Disclaimer: Title and song by Howie Day. Not mine.
Summary: A look into the future.
A/N: Heh. I think I need to stop letting songs inspire me. :P I'm not sure if this will be multiple chapters or not, but I'm thinking yes. Thanks to Ari for beta-ing. :D And I dedicate this chapter to SamiJoe, happy 15th! :D
The dawn is breaking
A light shining through
You're barely waking
And I'm tangled up in you
The morning light starts to shine through the window.
It awakens her, and she slowly opens her eyes and finds herself unaware of where she is.
A few seconds pass and then she remembers and rolls over.
A grin spreads across her face as she sees him. His hair is deranged. His shirt has risen upwards showing a glimpse of his stomach, and his head is resting on his hand. He looks peaceful, childish even. The years vanish; the faint lines in his forehead deplete.
As she watches him, she finds herself wanting to reach out and touch him. But she doesn't want to wake him, so she sustains herself by continuing to stare.
She wonders if he can feel her watching, and decides that he probably can. She tries to pull her eyes away, but she finds it too difficult to do after being apart for so long; she cannot keep her eyes off him.
Something brushes against her foot and she glances down to see his foot now entwined with hers. She shivers and looks around. After spotting the blanket on the floor, she tugs on her long sleeved shirt and pulls down the legs of her jeans.
She can hardly remember what happened the night before, except that they were both extremely tired by the time they got there, and that the second her head had hit the pillow that she had fallen asleep.
He walked ahead of her with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. He wanted to walk with her, or talk even, but they hadn't really spoken in the car, so it was back to the awkward silence. She trailed behind him, slowly, unsure of herself and what she was doing.
He reached the door and with a shaky hand pulled out his key and cleared his throat.
"Uh, this is it."
She nodded and then a few seconds later, realized that he couldn't see her nodding and laughed uneasily. "Oh, I uh...was nodding, but that was dumb because I'm behind you and you couldn't possibly have seen me, because obviously you don't have eyes in the back of your head, no one does, except in movies and that's even unrealistic if you think about it..." She trailed off, blushing.
He turned around and smirked slightly. He had missed that; how she would rant when she was nervous.
She approached the door and looked down. He unlocked the door and pulled it open. "Come in," He said and motioned his hands towards the door.
She took a deep breath and followed him inside.
"Sit down." He pointed at the table and chairs sitting in the tiny kitchen/living room.
"Okay," she said and pulled out a chair.
"Um..." He shuffled around the kitchen awkwardly. "Do you want something to drink? Eat?"
"Uh...no, we just ate, I'm not really hungry yet," she answered, gently.
He nodded and looked down, trying to think of something to say.
"I'm more tired than anything," she told him.
"Oh, okay. You can take the bed, I'll take the couch."
She shook her head. "No, no. You take the bed. It's your place, I'll take the couch."
He raised an eyebrow at her and pointed to the couch. "You want to sleep on that?"
She looked at it and frowned. It looked like he had pulled it out of a dumpster. "Uh, yeah, I do."
He rolled his eyes. "Well, that's too bad. You're sleeping in the bed."
"I am not."
He groaned. "Why do you have to be so damn stubborn?"
She narrowed her eyebrows at him. "You're way more stubborn than I am!"
"Whatever. That doesn't change the fact that you're sleeping in the bed."
She started to protest, but he held up a hand and sighed. "Okay fine. How 'bout this? I'll sleep on the couch and you sleep on the bed?"
She started to nod, but stopped and shook her head. "Hey, mister! Don't you try that! I've seen that Scooby-Doo episode," She told him.
He smirked. "It was worth a shot."
She sighed. "Where's the bedroom?"
He pointed across the room, towards the closed door.
She crossed the room and opened the door, peering inside. "Hmm."
"What?" He asked.
"I've solved the problem," she said proudly.
"Oh, really?"
She nodded. "We'll both sleep in the bed."
"What?! No. Not happening," he said shaking his head.
"Oh, come on! We're both exhausted. We both want to sleep. We're never going to get to sleep if we don't both sleep in the bed; we'll be arguing about this all night, otherwise."
He continued to shake his head.
"We can draw an invisible line down the center of it; put all the pillows as a divider...whatever. I just need to sleep. I am so incredibly tired, and you are too. I can tell."
He sighed. "Okay, fine." He shut off the kitchen light and walked over to the bedroom.
She went around to the left side and pulled her knee up on top of it, but before she had enough time to bring her other knee up, she toppled over and fell into the pillow. "Ow."
"So graceful," he teased as he lay down onto his side of the bed.
"Shut up," she told him and smacked his arm.
"It's a good thing you didn't want to be a ballerina when you grew up."
She looked over at him and grinned. "Actually..."
"No," He shaking his head.
"I did, I was 5 and I was in Ms. Patty's ballet class... but I got kicked out," she said solemnly.
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You got kicked out of ballet class? Why? What'd you do... do an improper twirl?"
"Well, actually, I had some difficulties balancing on my left foot... you know with my right foot in the air? I couldn't do it. But really it was stupid, I am right handed, I don't use my left foot very often..."
He nodded. "Right, because it's only natural that you use your right foot to do everything," He said sarcastically.
She rolled her eyes. "But still..."
"That was why you got kicked out?" He asked frowning.
"Well, no. I..." She laughed softly. "I didn't have proper cleanliness."
"What?"
"I wanted to wear this multi-colored rainbow tutu everyday, and Ms. Patty said that it wasn't proper hygiene and that I was too young to wear a tutu anyways. But I refused to wear those leotard things. So she kicked me out of it. I actually have a picture of me wearing that thing..."
"I bet you looked like a clown."'
She frowned at him. "No, I looked very sophisticated."
He laughed and she yawned. "Tomorrow you're gonna balance for me."
She grinned. "Only if you do it too so I can prove how hard it is."
"We'll see," he told her.
She nodded. "Good night, Jess."'
"Night," He said before rolling over.
He opened one of his eyes and looked across at her. "Hey."
"Hey," She said back and smiled. "Sleep good?"
"Yeah," He answered. "You?"
"Yep, I slept pretty good, except when I woke up last night and saw a spider staring at me."
His eyes widened. "Really?"
"No," She said laughing. "But you would have killed it right?"
He cleared his throat. "Of course."
She smirked. A few seconds passed and then he frowned when he heard a gurgling sound. "What was that? Was that your stomach?"
She blushed and shrugged.
"Breakfast?" he questioned.
She nodded eagerly.
"Waffles, bacon, and coffee?"
"Mmm," she said sighing happily.
He sat up and stretched before walking towards the kitchen. "It'll be ready in 10 minutes," He yelled from the kitchen.
"Okay. I'm gonna go to the bathroom and try to, uh, clean up a bit," She told him before climbing out of bed and looking around. "Um, Jess?"
"Yeah?" He asked as he appeared in the doorway.
"Do you have a shirt I could borrow?"
He nodded and pointed to the dresser that was sitting next to the bed. "Shirts are in the middle drawer, take any one."
He went back to the kitchen and she opened up the drawer and started to sift through them. A few seconds later she stopped, not finding anything she wanted. She looked around and noticed his closet door halfway open.
She walked over to it, curiously, and pushed it open. She skimmed through the shirts and quietly gasped when her eyes fell upon a certain shirt.
The shirt he wore when she met him in New York, the one with the maroon sleeves and the skull and crossbones on front. She grinned and decided that she wanted to wear that one.
She pulled it off of the hanger and stuck her head out of the room, making sure that Jess wasn't looking, before heading to the bathroom. She pulled off her shirt and slipped his on. It was a little baggy, and the threads at the bottom were starting to come apart, but it was perfect at the same time.
A/N: Reviews would be lovely! :D