Disclaimer: I do not own "Newsies" or any of the genius associated to them. Disney owns them, no infringement intended. I am not making money from this in any way, I claim no rights to the characters mentioned from the movie, but I do claim the plot and the ideas surrounding this story. Don't steal, don't sue, and I'm sure we will all be grand friends. The poem in italics is The Shadowy Waters by W.B. Yeats. It isn't mine and I don't claim it to be so.
A/N: Do you ever have days where you can just feel sickness creeping into your body? Today was one of those days.
Warning: PG-13 (language, adult themes)
viii.)
her beauty is all fireworks&frustration
always better in person&always out of reach
2nd to the right && straight on till 3 break
(they're always losing their way)
he takes her (wherever she wants to go)
but only if she wants where he needs to be
Somewhere around Oklahoma (the southwest could wait – he wanted to see the Colorado Rockies) he took up drawing. Paints were too messy and not portable enough (at least that is what he told her when he sold her water colors without her consent). He didn't want to take a picture (it was too touristy) he wanted to create one (just so that it could be exactly as he remembered and not as it actually was). She got used to sitting and waiting while he captured everything he wanted onto the page (he was always recording things onto a page in one way or another) but he never let her see what exactly he was drawing.
Three hundred miles ago she had mentioned that she missed her water colors and he had begun to draw within the same day (it was as if it was his own idea). She is content to let him have his black and white charcoal (but she can't help but ache for the color to create something). His long artistic fingers glide across page after page and she envies him (he has something she'll never understand). It is effortless (like the way he speaks) and focused (like the way he fucks). She doesn't understand how everything he does is unintentionally seductive (but she doesn't realize the kiss in the corner of her mouth is quite darling all in its own).
It doesn't happen till they drive over the Continental Divide, but now when she looks at him she wonders just how far they'll have to go to find his words (is that even what this is all about?). The more they drive – the more time she has to wonder (he isn't the best conversationalist and she doesn't want him to feel like she is nagging).
It isn't that wants to leave him (her little-girl-love follows him blindly) she just wonders (she doesn't even remember where she used to call home). He doesn't look at the maps anymore (he hasn't for the past thousand miles) and she wonders why. She doesn't really care where they're going (and she's pretty sure he doesn't know either) but she just wonders. When he draws he always makes her sit in front of him so she can't see what he's drawing and she wonders what his hazel eyes see that she can't. It isn't that she doesn't appreciate his secrets (she doesn't) but she wants all of him.
It's the one way streets and dead ends that give away his confused path (but his boyish arrogance would never call them lost). They may drive at night, but he can't find his way by the stars (second to the right and straight on). Sometimes he stops at gas stations for directions (where is that mermaid lagoon?) and a cup of coffee, and always comes out in a hurry and breathing hard (they have to get money somehow, don't they?). They drive the fastest when that happens, but that's fine as long as he is by her side. Again, she wonders, but she doesn't ask.
It is their morning (the sun is just setting) and his fingers tangle in her rumpled hair (they slept in the backseat last day in the shade between two semi trucks at a rest stop). He breathes in her kiss and feels the familiar way she melts against him.
"She has begun forgetting. When she wakes,
The years that have gone over her from the hour
When she dreamt first of love, shall flicker out." He whispered and she shivered from her nose to her toes at those words, but she's heard them from him before (she know she has she just can't remember where).
"Where do you want to go?" he asked quietly and she paused (he'd never asked after her wants or needs and she froze at his question). When she looks at him she can barely hold his gaze (looking him in the eyes is like trying to look past the light).
She spoke the first word that came to her mind: "Home." She said (but she couldn't remember where home was - he'd robbed her of that memory).
A mischievous smile twitched his lips and he kissed her again, but there was no smile in his touch (he kissed her like he was trying to suck venom out of a wound).
"I have a better idea." He was no longer touching her and his foot was on the gas.
She never even had time to object.
A/N: Thanks to QuirkyDel and Newgirl Poet for reading and contributing to the community.