It's cold. Gray clouds form around his head as he breathes and frozen blades of grass crunch underfoot. It is his first time here, soon to be last he figures, and it's certainly not of his own accord. He turns to look at his shadowed companions. They smile at his gaze, hands clasped tight, lips together, and he knows they are all rehearsed. No one smiles here.
The flowers are cold in his grasp. Petals fall against the frozen ground and Finn can only stare at their color instead of at the slab of bleak gray in front. His knees are wet from the dew. He shivers.
Rachel would hate it here, Finn thinks.
He swallows.
Rachel would hate it here.
He looks up and everything finally starts.
...
He has a dream: white lace curled around his fingers, Rachel, naked as the day she was born, grinning up at him from her place under his arm, and a bottle of cheap whiskey from the hotel room bar is being passed between the two. The room smells of sweat and semen, and his palm is slick against the cool glass. Rachel laughs at something stupid he says and chokes on a mouthful of alcohol.
He has a dream: red pouring over his fingers, Rachel, dressed in white and so, so beautiful, looking at him with her glassy brown eyes and a frown. The cheap bottle of whiskey from the hotel room bar tipped and spilling onto the daisy patterned sheets, swirling, swirling, swirling with the thick red. Rachel is crying at something he did, choking around a mouthful of blood.
He hates dreams, but they continue to visit.
...
Nobody cares. She's gone (gone, gone, fucking gone) and nobody cares.
...
He sees red as someone's nose crunches under his fist. He doesn't really remember who he's punching; he remembers only the alcohol that tasted good and the asshole who finally snapped his self-control.
The sound of his heart is the only thing Finn can hear, and it is pounding. Thump, thump, thump, like a drum beating in the back of his mind, and his fists fall in time. He can taste iron and salt and he can feel warm blood across his hands and someone's tightening grip around his arm pulling him off the mess of a man Finn was hunched over.
People are looking at him. Looking, looking, looking, that's all they do now; look at Finn. They look, and he feels the warmth of his tears, the blood is across his palms, and their heavy gaze, but all he can see is brown.
God, she had pretty eyes.
...
It ends like this: Rachel is somewhere upstate New York, visiting her dad, and driving in the snow storm that meteorologists say has a fair chance of becoming a blizzard. Some fucker has a couple of broken tail lights and Rachel has nothing but an expansion of black ice ahead of her.
She's alive two more hours after that, but Finn doesn't get there until she's quiet and pale.
...
"Love you," she whispers between parted lips. His thumb chases the curve of her cheek, mouth hot and moist against his own, and he murmurs the words of farewell.
...
Rachel is naked and dancing when he finally makes it home one day.
Her laugh is contagious and her smile is bright as she declares that it's naked day, and tugs him into their bedroom. When he's pulling off his pants, she's turning the radio up and laughing when he trips over his feet and falls on top their daisy patterned sheets. It's a beautiful sight when she laughs, and it's a beautiful sight when she flutters out of the room.
When he finally joins her, she's flushed, pink and red.
...
They stare at each other. Eyes wide, nostrils flared, and Finn's hands are fists.
...
It's snowing, and cold, and Rachel is smiling. Their names are signed in the blanket of snow with the impressions of their bodies, and she's whispering into his warm skin, "When I'm old, I want to live somewhere where it's cold a lot."
He hums, says something stupid, and grins when she shoves him and says she is serious. Finn laughs and imagines her old wrinkled face, pink from the cold, and a couple of frostbitten toes. He is there too, of course, a little fatter around the edges and gray at his temples.
It's a nice image. It's a really, really nice image, and it makes him smile. When Rachel laughs and tugs him into the snow once more, all he can think of is wrinkled pink cheeks and straining reindeer sweaters against their stomachs. And later, when he tells her about the image that has seared itself across his mind, she smiles, says, "I'll never get fat," and winks before she fucks him on an old quilt to the sound of wind hitting the windowpane.
...
She has his head in her lap, fingers swirling around his brown hairs and fingernails scratching at his scalp. The television is playing softly in the corner, casting a blue hue across their laps. It's reassuring, the television. It reminds him of the lives spinning on just outside his line of vision; school, taxes, children, work, all constants in the lives of many. It reminds him to memorize the map of freckles across Rachel's thigh, to drag her out skinning dipping just because they can. It reminds him before the pull of life grabs him by the ankles and drags him under its current.
Rachel grins. "You're thinking too hard."
Shaking his head, he tugs on the hair spilling from behind her ear and tickling the apple of his cheek. "Not possible. It's empty up here, remember?" He raps his knuckles against his forehead and she laughs.
Life carries on, but Rachel kisses him until he forgets.
...
He breathes and presses their hands to his forehead, his lips brushing against wrist. "Marry me," he finally says.
"Oh, honey," she says, mouth pulling into a sorrowful smile, fingers cold against his forehead, then, "No."
...
Behind her, the noise escalates until Finn can feel the thump of the bass deep in his chest, pounding in time with his heart. Rachel smiles with her lips, mouth open in a laugh, and twirls with the sound of cymbals. Her dotted dress is flared around her thighs and the beer in her hand splashes from its container, but she does not notice this. When she crooks her finger at him he is quick to follow.
...
They buy an apartment together.
People whisper - together only a few months, they say, too soon, too young, they say - and Rachel chatters excitedly - it's perfect, Finn, she says, there isn't a greater place in all of New York for them. Finn hears the people, but he doesn't care.
The old lady from down the hall tells Finn he is such a gentleman when he helps her find her cat, Mr. Whiskers, after he gets out again, and she tells him his wife is a pretty thing after Rachel calls for him and proclaims she needs his help. He doesn't correct her and promises come over again and have some oatmeal cookies once they've finally finished moving in.
Rachel is awash in triumph when he returns. She maps out their routes to work, and buys shoes she says won't hurt his feet like his old tennis shoes now and she buys baskets and sheets, and then tells him to buy some more groceries from the store down the block. She has yellow paint smeared across her nose when she tells him this because Rachel decides to do a million things at once and, of course, she needs carrots while she paints. He laughs.
Finn goes out and buys carrots and sunflowers and surprises her when he gets home.
Home. It's nice.
...
"Do you love me?" he asks into the warm, wet skin of her stomach. The sheets are tangled around his calves and his heart is still thrumming in his ears.
She smiles, teeth gleaming white like the wolf she is to carry his heart away, and says no.
...
His mother taught him to be a nice boy, a real nice boy who does what is asked and always combs his hair and tucks in his shirts. Say a prayer before bed, and a prayer for the wicked. His mother taught him to be a nice boy, but Rachel ruffles his hair and pulls his shirts and kisses him until he forgets what a nice boy means.
...
The bread sticks taste like ash in his mouth.
He swallows, once, twice, and makes a pained grimace as the mouthful slides down his throat. Rachel grins and his heart thumps. "I warned you there were terrible."
Finn laughs, fingers closing around her own, and their palms flat against the table. "I should have listened to you."
"You should always listen to me," she says, and tightens her hold on him until the tips of her fingers are white from the strain of it, until his skin is clammy and his breath is short, "I'm always right."
He smiles and kisses yes, you are into her mouth, later, when his hand is tight around the steering wheel and her skirt is slipping up her thighs.
...
She smiles and he falls.
...
"Finn. I don't, fuck, Finn. I don't usually do this."
Her voice is against his shoulder and her fingers are clenched around his arm and, Jesus, she is warm and wet around him. "Do what?" he asks, and pulls at her hips until they are nose to nose. Her breath smells like peppermint and her eyelashes are tangled, framing her pretty brown eyes, and something tightens inside him.
God, she has pretty eyes.
"Have sex with strangers," she says.
He kisses her mouth, puckered and red from their previous actions, murmuring, "I'm not a stranger."
"Finn," she says, smiling, "I've only met you twice."
He's smiling now too, pressing his thumb to the swollen lip and he whispers, "See? Not a stranger."
Rachel laughs and it's nice, dancing around in his brain and filling his head with nothing but red kisses and pretty brown eyes.
...
It starts like this: the waitress asks him what he'd like and smiles and everything just -
stops.
The title for the drabble comes from the song She Lit a Fire by Lord Huron.