i was just admiring my gorgeous header made by @darlingshane when the little gremlin in my brain told me to write about it so here we are
set during the bridge scene after “so you met madani huh?”
[ao3 link]
The bite of the wind is a physical thing on the exposed skin of her face. Karen stands with her eyes lowered, reeling from his frustration, his desperation. He’d yelled at her. Or not at her but—towards her. Frantic. Please, he says, and then steps closer. For a second she thinks he’ll only stare into her eyes in that ice pick way of his, chipping away the armor she’s built up around herself. Trying to get her to see reason, to do as he asks. To beg her to stay away from him, safe. He’s always been good at that, the asking. She’s never been good at the listening.
But then he’s closer still by the time her chin lowers and she stops moving, stops breathing because the air has shifted between them somehow and he’s going to kiss her. She doesn’t exactly know where the thought comes from, but she thinks it and knows it’s true.
Frank doesn’t reach out physically. His hands stay by his sides or maybe in his pockets, and he inches into her space—not quite touching—as if he’s convincing himself not to turn and bolt in the opposite direction. Karen doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare look up at him, torn between a very physical ache to have him closer and a fear that if she so much as blinks, this moment will go careening over the rails and into the dark waters of the bay, swept away by the current.
His lips find her cheek and as cold as she is, the warmth of his mouth feels like a brand on her skin.
Yours, she thinks to herself, a quiet revelation.
He lingers for half a breath, and then draws back just as fast. She has the sudden urge to chase after his lips and caress them with her own; she would kiss him fully and she would wrap herself up in the wings of his jacket and let herself be enveloped by his warmth. She would press close until their bodies are trading atoms of heat. She would lick her way into his mouth and swallow down any sounds he might make. All of this flies through her mind and her cheek is burning from one gentle kiss, and before she can make her voice work to ask him—anything, to stay just another minute, to go get a coffee, to come home with her and sit on the couch and trade sorrows somewhere were they can remove these layers and be comfortable—he’s looking around for anyone who might be watching, and then he ducks past her and is gone. Her ghost dressed in black, disappearing into the night. The warmth of his kiss is gone too fast, almost as soon as it began.
She wonders if he looks back to watch her, immobile by the water. Something tells her he doesn’t, and she doesn’t turn to check. She stands there until her toes are numb in her boots and tries to commit the scratch of his stubble on her skin to memory.
Someone rides by on a bicycle, music playing from their phone, and it jolts her out of the nebula she’d been lost in. Karen turns and goes home and dreams of endings and afters, and the question of where one stops and one begins. And alone in her quiet apartment, she lets herself hope that it may just begin with a too quick, too chaste kiss by the water.
67 notes
·
View notes