Title: Fingering Smoky Thoughts
Author: GQSecondAct
Rating: PG
A/N: Just a thought I had after last night's episode. I'll continue if you guys want me to! For now, it seems to be a one-parter piece. Please let me know what you think, because I love reviews. I'm not afraid of constructive criticism! It's definitely Meg and Chris. Enjoy! -molly-
It's been a while since he's cared. He stands in the bitter, chilled air that is Philadelphia on a Thursday night, an air that is heaving from the weight of nonessential intolerance and gray smoke and strangled voices, and wonders how anyone else cares. She is watching him now, just slightly bemused, and then the frosty winter orbs of her eyes drift down his arm and follow his hand as he wipes sticky white paint on a coarse brick wall.
"Are you kidding me?" he's saying when the words sort of melodiously tumble from her lips. They are crimson from the bitter, chilled Thursday night air, and she runs her tongue over them nervously. She asked him what happened to him. It sounded rude to her, and she is nervous now.
So then, he stops wiping the paintbrush on the coarse brick wall and says something, but she is too caught up in his face and the way the glow of a flashlight silhouettes his cheekbones. And there are his eyes, so brown that they're black in the purple air of a Thursday night, and he is standing there, so close yet so far away. And he's facing her.
She doesn't hear what he says, but that doesn't matter because she doesn't move when he kisses her. When a boy kisses her, she always feels clumsy and awkward, and this time is no different. She kicks the bucket of sticky white paint a little with her shoe, and it makes a round, echoing metallic noise on the invisible pavement – invisible in the purple air.
She can feel him sort of smirk against her lips, her crimson lips, as he catches them gently in his own. He didn't seem like the kind who would catch her lips gently. But he does, and it makes her feel less awkward so that she can concentrate on other things – like helping her hands make their way around his neck.
All he had been tasting before her was the crisp, biting air of war-torn Philadelphia, but now he can taste warm crimson safeness, bundled in a powder blue woolen coat and nervously wrapping its trembling arms around his neck. He realizes that he cares about being safe. For now, she is a nice safeness, and he likes powder blue wool and knowing that he can calm trembling arms.
She has flaxen hair that he finds he likes to twist around his thumbs and run his fingers through, raking for warmth. She runs her hands, Snow White hands with small pink nails, from his neck to his calloused shoulders. Even under the jacket, they feel rough and strong and she doesn't remember ever feeling a rough strongness in a boy.
He thinks they've been kissing for a very long time and he is afraid that if he doesn't pull away, she will – but he is the only one who knows that he's afraid. So he pulls away and makes the steadiest eye contact he can manage. He is slowly gripping the fact that it was a sole kiss and just maybe, she would not have minded if he kept gently following her lips as they followed his too, and kept steadying her trembling arms, and kept twining his fingers in her thick ringlets.
She looks like something from a fairytale book, staring back at him, trying to match the steady gaze he has. It is a gaze that is only steady because he has practiced it many nights leaning against the car in his driveway, a burning stub of a cigarette hanging from his lips and his eyes following a curtain as it shifted and twisted in the bitter, icy winds of a Philadelphia night.
Sometimes it was her curtain...not that she noticed.
Sometimes she did notice...not that he saw her noticing, of course.
The wind picks up, and she bites the bottom corner of her lip shyly, and he swears that he can almost see her cheeks flood with a rich scarlet - even in a night when everything is invisible but the silhouette of that determined face and a powder blue woolen coat lit up from a flashlight.
She can feel her cheeks turning red but thanks the purple air because he probably cannot see it. He breaks eye contact, and she does not know why, but silently thanks nobody in particular because she doesn't know how much longer she would have been able to stand there without pressing her lips back to his, asking for him to capture them gently.
She doesn't know he did it because he knew she was getting nervous.
They are painting again and the air is still bitter and icy and heaving with the weight of nonessential intolerance and gray smoke and strangled voices.
Both seem to notice it less. They can breathe a little freer now.
............
It is another icy purple Philadelphia night, but the exhaust pipe from the car is blowing hot, vaporous pillows of black smoke into the air. He can't tell the difference between the car smoke and the smoke emanating from the fierce and orange yet hardly visible embers on the tip of the white roll hanging between his teeth.
He is leaning on the car in his driveway and the lights in his house are still off. The back door is still locked. His mother is still occupied but even when he's alone, he won't show the building need to spontaneously combust with frustration and confusion and...something he things is akin to inferiority.
The white eyelet curtain on her window is winding itself in always undoable knots outside of her window and she is sitting crosslegged on her bed, facing the purple night air and her thoughts and her white reflection in the glass. She can see the curls of smoke and streams of silvery exhaust in the air below her window and she smiles a frown, because she knows that it is him but also why he is out there.
She thinks that he's afraid but she wouldn't dare say anything. So she wraps herself up in a pilly pink robe and slips down the stairs and walks out into the Friday night air of a Philadelphia October. He sees her but his head doesn't move – just his eyes. (Dark globes searching for her glassy aquamarine ones, ones that dance, but sadly. He doesn't know that she's figured out what he's really feeling when he stands here at night, smoking a cigarette and watching her curtains).
She leans against the rusting car next to him, and searches his face with those big wondering eyes. He has his suspicions about what she suspects about him – but he'll put that to bed and try his hand at twisting his thumbs in her thick hair again.
She likes when he plays with her curls, even though he's only done it once before. After all, you can only miss what you've had.
He twists his fingers in her hair but their lips never touch...now doesn't seem the right time for that. Both are happy, to themselves, that the other knows when is the time for such things. It seems juvenile, but he seems to think that she knows he is in a serious mood.
...Her hand entwined with his on a bitter, icy Philadelphia evening makes his desire to become an orange ember not quite as fervent, and lessens the sting of the utterly cold air that enters his lungs.
On a second thought, he thinks, the air entering his lungs is a little less cold as well.