"We still have this?" David chuckled and lifted the jumble of wood and string. "I thought mama threw it out the window because it scared her."
Sarah watched him illuminated by the slanting evening light, rooting through the old steamer trunk of their childhood belongings. In the fifteen—and a half as he never failed to remind her—years of his existence, she found that she had never looked at him. As in, really looked at him. How his chin had a cleft or how his hair was lit up to a gorgeous chestnut by the sun or the sheer luminosity of his blue eyes.
Now she watched him untangle his old marionette, upper teeth slowly kneading his lower lip as he did so. Finding his efforts to no avail, he tossed it back in and went for something else.
"Oh, wow," he breathed. "I have to show Jack this."
He held up a stuffed rabbit missing an ear and a half tauntingly, dangling the dusty mound of beige fur in front of Sarah's face.
"Stop it," she giggled, swatting it away. "And if you show that to Jack, I'll kill you."
David raised his eyebrows. "Oh, really?"
"Yes, really!" Sarah lunged for the rabbit but David was quicker.
He jumped up onto her bed, bouncing up and down a few times, holding the bunny mockingly over his head in a way that said 'ha, ha, can't catch me!'
Sarah jumped up but slipped on the hem of her skirt, grabbing onto David's legs so she wouldn't fall. He buckled forward and they fell onto the floor. The bunny was pinned between them and the dusty smell made them both sneeze on each other.
"Ew!" they squealed at the same time.
Then Sarah reached up and kissed him.
"Ew!" David repeated. "What'd you do that for? Do you know how wrong that was? I mean, did it mean anything? I mean—"
"David," Sarah said tiredly. "Just shut up for once in your life."
--
And that was how it happened. It had only been once. They hid from each other from then on, which was a mighty feat seeing as they shared a room. David went out early, came home late, never made eye contact, skipped dinner. Their parents were worried about him but Sarah knew what the problem was and that she was the cause. She was the bunny he was the marionette and she jumbled up his entire way of thinking and she knew that David hated her for that. She hated herself for that.
"David," she said one night. "I'm sorry."
She had stayed up late—late as in late—to relay the message upon his return. He blinked from the doorway. Then he turned away from her and glanced up, the edges of his mouth curling up in a fair approximation of a smile.
"Yeah," he said to the beams above. "I'm sorry too."
--
A/N: Yeah, ewwww, Flowers in the Attic-ness, right? Well I said that these were odd couples didn't I?