Would Have

Participants:

colette_icon.gif sable_icon.gif

Scene Title Would Have
Synopsis Late at night, a sleepless Sable and Colette discuss what might have been, but wasn't.
Date May 12, 2010

The Lighthouse


The moon is nothing but the merest sliver, lying mostly in shadow. Its thin illumination barely suffuses a patch in the thick layer of clouds that blanket the sky, a match for the white cerement that covers the city. It's a shame it's not clear out. For once in a very long time, much of the city is dark. The stars would be visible. It would be breathtaking, at least for those who dared to peek outside.

The windows of the Lighthouse are mostly dark as well - it's well past everyone's bedtime. But just as there is the small patch of the moon's reflected light gleaming through the cloud cover, so too is there a light burning in the window of the living room, similarly filtered through a thick layer of frost and accumulated snow, wisely left to assist with insulation - windows are prodigal of heat, and heat is a commodity surpassing valuable these days. A light is on, and that means someone is awake.

Sable stayed up a lot of nights past her bedtime, back under the roofs of others. Defiance comes in many ways, and those that persist longest are often those that escape retribution. Reading under one's covers, for example, or just lying awake out of pure pig-stubborneess. Or playing the piano.

Not that Sable had the chance to do this last when she was in foster care. But there's always a time to start. Magnes' keyboard stands in one corner of the living room, a bench resting before it, and the yellow eyed girl sits, fingers working over the keys with a deliberacy that suggests she is not at home with the instrument. The volume is turned down low, so the notes that issue from the instrument sound as if coming from a distance just from across the room, but Sable still seems immersed, her brow ridged with concentration, her head moving with the tempo of the music as she plays. Not well, not gracefully. But she plays, and the tune is simple and heartfelt, and constant. Sometimes she misses a note, sometimes she gets the hang of it and speeds up too much, but she keeps at it, driven by a restless energy.

Dressed in an oversized t-shirt and Hello Kitty boyshorts that have seen the liberal application of fabric marker, giving the famous feline eyepatches and devil horns, Sable plays. Looks like someone can't get to sleep.

It's a plague that Colette knows well herself, the inability to sleep. While her preclusion from the dream world isn't due to the fact that she has to bunk in the room with the kids like Magnes and Sable do, it's more from a nervous restlessness. What she curls up at the side of most nights is pure comfort, but some nights she just can't help but stay awake and stare at the ceiling. After what happened yesterday, she has a lot to think about.

It's what makes her have to creep down the stairs, socked feet scuffing over the hardwood, one hand ruffling through dark locks of hair, green eyes downturned to follow the alternating progress of hunter orange and navy blue socks as they follow the steps down.

No one usually sleeps downstairs, because it's the first place to get noisy come morning when the children wake up. Aside from the distant ratling click of the dryer running the last load of today's laundry through its final drying cycle, Colette's plodding footfalls seem to be the only sound left in the Lighthouse. Not until she hears the too-quiet notes of piano keys.

Her shadow finds its way into the living room first, fillowed by her narrow silhouette standing in the rounded doorway, stairs at her back. Those old and faded flannel pants she wears are staring to fray at the hem by her heels, and the carnation red t-shirt she's worn for years with its silkscreened Che-Guevara face printed across the front is splitting at the shoulder, loose with threads. She's looked more disheveled, but not by much.

"Isn't it past your bedtime?" Colette offers from the doorway, arms folding across her chest as she slouches to the side and leans one shoulder against the inside of the doorway, looking up past Sable to the frosted window, then back to the girl at the keys, then down to— those aren't pants— then back up again as she clears her throat.

A more skilled pianist could be all smooth, keep playing while she turned her head and answered Colette. Such a pianist Sable is not. The music stops abruptly as Colette's voice reaches her ears, and her shoulders hunch in a momentarily defensive posture. She's been caught! Ah, but by whom? A familiar voice.

Sable's head turns, her weird eyes sliding up to find Colette. Her smile is half guilt, half mischief. "Ain't no rule I don't make some effort t'break at some fuckin' point, hon," she says, though her words lack a certain something, a sharpness they usually carry. Maybe it's just that it's late, and she's keeping her voice down - not a usual thing for her. It's all brass and leather, tempered with conspiritorial whisper, when it comes to Sable.

The girl at the piana turns on the bench, pulling one of her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around it, chin resting on her knee as. "Yeah, can't fuckin' sleep. Got too much rattlin' around in the space 'twixt my ears," she squints one eye, "What's your excuse, hon? Can't seem to figure what'd be keepin' you up, knowing only what I know. Somethin' troublin' you?" She sounds more curious than concerned, but there is a bit of that latter in there. It's not that she thinks Colette is troubled - she was just saying it to say it - but saying it brings the possibility to mind, and thus the concern.

"For all that people say I don't think much," Colette starts with a smirk, "sometimes I can't stop…" Rolling her thumb across the silver ring on her index finger, she leans away from the door casing and takes a few meandering steps in to the livingroom, looking up at the lights, then over to the window's frosted panes of glass. As always she's walking on her toes, some sort of habit that persists only when she's barefoot or socked, never in shoes.

Walking over to the keyboard, Colette furrows her brows, looking down at it with a mild curiosity before lifting thoe green eyes to look up to Sable, arms still crossed over her chest. "Yesterday ah," her head shakes a little, "just a lot going on. Had a couple of unexpected visitors, Magnes freaked— " one eye closes and she considers Sable with a squint, "he didn't tell you?" There's a purse of her lips, a sigh that makes her shoulders deflate, and she's moving over to find a space on the bench seat beside Sable, facing the opposite direction.

Lifting one leg up much as Sable is, Colette rests her chin on her knee, then switches more to her cheek so she can regard the brunette at her side, arms hugging the leg close to herself. "Aren't— you cold?" Is the question she decides to go with, eyeing bare legs.

There is a split second decision that can be seen all over Sable's face… but luckily Colette is facing away from her for that exactly moment. A bite of the lower lip, the dart of the eyes to one side, the dip of lashes. Sable inches backwards, and brings her shoulder to touch against Colette's - the lightest of contacts. Her eyes remain closed.

"I'm fairly fuckin' useless as I am," Sable admits, one hand sliding down her calf, splaying on the bridge of her foot and playing with her toes. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home… "Yer gonna have to fill me in. Magnes flipped shit? Poor kid. I was hopin' Elaine'd give him a little, I dunno… Somethin' to keep him from gettin' crazy. Feel like he oughta be happy or somethin'. Seems like he's got a half decent shot at it, eh?"

Her shoulders lift in a shrug, one brushing against Colette's as it rises and falls. She mirrors the other girl's motions, eyes opening and sliding across to meet her gaze. She smiles, lopsidedly, an effect helped by the press of her knee against her cheek. "Naw. Not with you here, hon." Her head tilts, hair shifting, tips tracing the hollow above Colette's collar bone. "I didn't dare t'hope you'd come down while I was here. 'cept now I know I was hopin' all along despite myself."

Snorting out a laugh, Colette leans against the shoulder, rocking a little from side to side once Sable rests weight against herself, both in playful measure to see how far the other teen will lean to one side and also just in amusement for herself. It's a slow, swaying gait that she moves with. "It's person, to… him anyway. Some crap happened to him and he ran into the guy that caused it. A lot of woe is me stuff, really. We… we talked, I think he's got a better head on his shoulders, maybe." Chewing idly at her bottom lip, Colette cranes her neck to the side, regarding Sable through the dark fringe of her lashes.

"Sometimes I get t'thinkin' that he's not like, really cut out for all this. He's really…" one of her hands unclasps from her shin, wavering in a see-saw motion in the air, "like, bi-polar sometimes?" She doesn't mean it as a job, and it's clear as day on her face that she doesn't feel entirely comfortable on the topic. "He'll get over it," she dismisses the worry, leaning herself against Sable a little more to slant the yellow-eyed girl to the side.

"I came down 'cause I was tossing and turning, and Tasha needs the sleep more'n I do. She was upset all night last night, but I think she's feeling better now." There'a a flick of green eyes down to the floor, then back up to Sable. "Parent stuff," she simplifies.

"Jesus," Sable says, wrinkling her nose, "But don't he keep tryin'? Was a Charley Brown cartoon I saw once. Somethin' about the, like, history of America. 'n' Peppermint Patty, y'know? She said that, basically, however sorry a bastard ol' Chuck was, he kept… plugging away is how she put it. Pluggin' away. Never gave up, no matter how many times he failed, nor how damned foolish he looked cuz of it." She shakes her head. "F'r good or ill, he'll keep pluggin' away, Magnes will. We just gotta be around t' make sure he don't fall so hard he can't get back up."

This speech is sombre, atypical for Sable, but Colette produces atypical behaviors in her with a fair regularity. She's likely noticed by now. "Parents," she snorts, "Fucked up this world, then brought us into it. Least they could do is get the fuck out of our business, eh?"

All the while, Sable has been swaying with Colette, back and forth, back and forth, but it's not until she's done speaking on Magnes that she joins the game of it. She presses a little more into Colette on the backpush, widening the sway, until suddenly, without warning more than the flash of a grin, she pulls away when she ought to push back, and then sways in so that their shoulders bump into each other, hard enough to make the bench under them tip precariously as the energy of the collision radiates outwards. To make sure Colette doesn't fall (at least that's the official story), Sable quickly slips an arm around her middle, fingers brushing against her tummy for a second as it does, steadying the green-eyed girl.

Sable's head tilts, sideways and back, the tip of her nose brushing against Colette's cheek. "Tell me y'r favorite song, hon," she says, voice low, conspiritorial. When she blinks, her lashes barely tickle against Colette's temple. "If I dunno it, I wanna learn to play it."

There's a sharp inhale of breath and then a sheepish giggle at the bump that nearly tips Colette over, more so at the arm around her waist holding her. Cheeks color, green eyes tip down to her lap, and Colette offers a mild smile that comes with a more serious consideration of Sable out of the corner of her eyes and beneath the dark edge of her lashes. She's still for a moment, then leans against Sable with a sigh, lightly bumping her head against the musician's shoulder.

It's a brief touch of her hair there, and Colette's leaning forward after it, sliding gently out of the embrace and up onto socked feet and then up onto her toes. She turns, hands resting on her hips and elbows akimbo, head tilted to the side and dark bangs hiding one eye. "You ever been asked by someone," Colette starts, "to pick a favorite song?" Her head shakes from side to side, teeth showing in a smile before she feigns a roll of her eyes and a dramatic sigh of exasperation, swinging her hips to one side as she turns around and begins sauntering towards the kitchen on her toes.

"My favorite song wouldn't be appropriate for you to play," Colette admits with an amused tone from halfway into the kitchen, lifting her arms up and folding her hands behind her head before she turns, toe-heel stepping across linoleum to face Sable. "It's sentimental, 'cause've my sister."

Furrowing her brows, Colette offers a small smile, then walks backwards into the kitchen, only turning once she bumps into the counter, then reaches up and starts rumming through the cupboards. "Why'd you wanna' learn it?" She asks to the cupboard's contents, or more likely Sable.

As Colette saunters away, Sable simply allows herself a moment of frank appreciation. Turning to face the other girl's retreating back, she leans forward, elbows on her knees, chin on her hands, eyes on Colette. She'd kick herself so hard if she could see her face right now, the smile that curves her lips. She looks thoroughly, whistfully, sublimely hopeless.

It's all Sable can do not to make her distraction completely obvious. There's a long delay as Sable's befuddled brain finally gets around to hearing what Colette said. "Hrm? Aw… arright, fair enough. Different song f'r different moods. But… I dunno. I know there's one song that moves me more than any other. Guess I'd answer with that one." One hand falls, dangling between her legs, the other's fingers spreading, so Sable can tilt her head and rest her cheek against it. She shifts a few inches sideways, just so can maintain a full view of Colette. Like hell is she gonna let an inch of her disappear from sight if Sable can help it.

"A song you love dearly… it's somethin' that's- it's more th'n part of you. It /makes/ you, y'know? It tells you what you are, better than y' ever knew just by y'rself. Music… it's a goddamn education. It lets y' know things, feel things, before you ever meet 'em. And then… when you do meet 'em for the first time… you recognize 'em." Sable gets slowly to her feet, moves towards the kitchen entrance and, gripping each side of the doorframe, leans in. "Learning' that would be learnin' about you. That's somethin' I'd like.

e cupboards, each one a gift from Gillian during her time at the Vegas strip; One Tasha's, one Sable's. They clunk down on the counterspace, and Colette shifts her weight to the side, stepping over to where the old and turquoise tea kettle rests beside the sink, lifting it up in one hand before ducking it down beneath the faucet and turning the water on. As it's filling, she finally regards Sable over her shoulder, wordlessly though. Green eyes dart up and down, then cast to the side as Colette starts to talk.

"La Mer." Colette says quietly, embarrsedly. "Not Somewhere Beyond the Sea, but— the French song. They sound the same, but the words're different." Colette's attention turns to the faucet, turning it off with a rattle of the pipes once she feels the proper weight in the kettle.

"When I was really, really little…" she moves away from the sink, walking through the small kitchen towards the stove, reaching up and stretching to reach the light above and click it on, goldenrod colored light dimly shines down on the stovetop, "my sister used to sing it to me. It was one of my first memories…"

Settling the kettle down on the stovetop, Colette recovers the box of matches from atop the sugar jar nearby. There's a strike of a match, the click-click-ticking of a bad pilot light, and a puff of blue flames beneath the kettle. Shaking the match out, Colette turns slowly and looks up and over at Sable, her smile small and insecure about the sharing of something like this.

"It's silly, I know I…" Colette's lips creep up into a tiny smile as she looks from Sable to the blackened match head. "Hold on to a lot of stuff. Kinda' sentimental…" it's more the ring she's looking at than the match, but her eyes soon enough focus up to Sable when she flicks the burned up match into the sink.

Sable grips the doorframe harder, bracing herself, and swings her legs into the kitchen, balls of her feet setting down first, ankles wobbling as Sable transfers to weight to this new point. Her arms extend, circle slightly, as she establishes her balance. "I'm ashamed I dunno it," she says, "An old song, I bet. Somethin' sweet, like wine," she cracks a grin, "At least, that's what I think of when I think of France. Wine. 'n' cheese. 'n' good techno."

A few steps bring Sable next to the stove, and a push draws her up onto the counter, a favorite style of perch, as Colette has seen. Her bare legs cross at the ankles and she leans forward, towards Colette, hands gripping the counter's edge. Her eyes are on Colette's face, her gaze a peer, taking the other girl in in detail. "I ain't gonna say yer more beautiful when yer makin' a confession. I'm just gonna say you're beautiful in a rare way that I'm glad to see. Go on and be sentimental, hon. It only adds facets to your fairness."

She catches Colette's line of sight, breaking off from her features to examine the match… and the ring. "Nothin' silly 'bout fond memory. Without it, our past time'd be like a night sky without any points of light, eh? Hot and black as ink. Better t' hold onto those than t' dwell on the darkness between. I've known folks like that. Bet you have too. They get swallowed up, eventually. That'd never fuckin' do, particularly for you. You… well, you know about light, doncha?" Her ankles unlink, and her leg extends, a foot reaching out to touch against Colette's hip, a little nudge. "Show me somethin'. I'd like t' see it again."

That ring looks incomplete, the kind of thin silver bant that could connect to another ring and be something whole. On it's own, it's just a quaint novelty puzzle piece, notched and grooved where something else fits perfectly; Tasha doesn't wear anything similar.

Glancing down at the nudge of a foot against her hip, Colette looks up with a mild wariness, considering Sable with an expression the older girl isn't accustomed to; something between wariness and amusement. "It's not just for show…" Colette implies, stepping around in front of Sable and coming to stand at her other side, rising up on socked toes as she opens up a cabinet beside the perched girl, the door forming a wall between them and something metal clink-clattering around where Colette is reaching.

There's quiet for a moment, until Colette settles back down on her heels and closes the cabinet door, holding a metal tin reserved for teabags in both hands. However, when she proffers it up to Sable, it's not just a metal tin. Situated atop it is a delicate looking neon-luminescent butterfly, winds a sapphire blue and paper thin, bright green antennae feather up off of its head like nothing in nature, and its wings slowly flex and flap up and down.

She smiles, green eyes reflecting the glow, and her pupils dilated wide as the butterfly takes flight, fluttering up around Sable's head, trailing tiny fire-fly like motes of jade pale green light beneath its wings, like phosphorescent motes of pollen. It's light-graffiti brought to life.

"There's no 'just' when it comes to the show," Sable counters, a sly smile pricking the corners of her mouth, "Not in my mind." She follows Colette's movements, curiosity augmenting her already focused attention. When the cabinet blocks her vision, she tries to lean around, but finds that she'd almost be falling off the counter if she went far enough. She doesn't have to wait long, though.

Sable reaches out to take the offered tin, fingers finding the smooth metal sides and pressing lightly to grasp it between her hands. She looks a little disappointed, resigned really, and then the butterfly appears before her eyes. She has to blink at first, to assure itself it's real, and then she beams as it takes flight. Her hands draw the tin towards her, pressing it just under her chest, arms sliding around it as her gaze follows the iridescent creature, eyes flicking to the trail it leaves, then back to the luminous creature itself. The girl arches her back, lifting her head up towards it, bringing the tip of her nose as close to the manifestation as possible. Of course, there's nothing to feel. It's pure semblance, beauty without substance, and all the lovelier for it.

Her gaze drops to Colette, and her smile is unambiguous. She's starstruck. It doesn't last long, though. Her cheeks grow pink, something that is only visible because of the paleness of her skin, and her smile becomes tinged with bashfulness. "I fear I'm makin' a fool of myself. Fear it more because I scarcely mind," she admits, "Fear it further, because foolishness acts itself out." She glances down at the tea box in her arms, then pops open the lid, reaching inside. She pulls out two bags of rosehip tea, herbal, nothing that'll keep them up. She extends her hand, offering them to Colette.

Thin fingers curl around the strings of the dangling bags, and Colette takes them from sable, letting her knuckles brush against the other teen's. There's a smile there, one of sympathy as she moves to step around in front of the yellow-eyed girl again, setting one tea bag down in each mug, then offers an askance look up to the brunette with that same lash-fringed, thoughtful gaze from before. "M'used to it… makin' myself look dumb, so— " her nose wrinkles, fingers smudge across the countertop, and eyes avert away from Sable's, "s'understandable."

Staring down into the empty mugs, Colette draws her bottom lip between her teeth, then looks up to regard Sable side-long, a bit more fully with those green eyes as the butterfly comes to land down on the edge of Sbale's teacup, then break apart entirely into zig-zagging blue sparkling lights that flicker-dash into nothingness.

Colette leans towards the brunette, up on her toes and cheek to cheek quickly. Lips ghost across Sable's cheek, a hand steadies Colette on the bare knee, and she lets herself linger there quietly. "You're sweet…" she whispers against the small kiss, "… don't sell yourself short, doing what I did." There's a touch of Colette's nose above where her lips pressed, a nudge of affection, "waiting for something that isn't real."

Her warm cheek moves away from Sable's at that, and Colette settles down onto the balls of her feet. Perhaps it realized what was going on, but the whistle of the tea kettle on the stove building up into a noisy shriek punctuates her far softer words.

Sable doesn't tense like she's done before when Colette has drawn so close. The only tension comes from the curling of her toes, and the catching of her breath. Once more her lids slide shut, narrowing the world as entirely as she can manage to just Colette's closeness, and her words. But their not words that can easily sustain the experience. They're words that permit too much of the outside, of the beyond this moment. Her lashes rise as her eyes reopen, catching Colette as she drifts away.

The kettle is clearly to blame, and Sable leans over to flick the dial off, cutting the heat and letting the invasive contraption whimper into silence. She slides right off the counter and moves up next to Colette, 'til their hips touch. Her yellow eyes cut sidelong at the other girl as her hand reaches out for both mugs. She's quiet for just a moment before she replies, softly. "You were waitin' when I met you," she says, "Waitin' on what was meant to be. I ain't holdin' out for a destiny, hon. What I want is here," she touches a hand to the small of Colette's back, leans over, and answers Colette's kiss with one of her own, just below her ear, only a shade less light, "And it's right now."

Colette's green eyes are wide, in the way that a deer caught in headlights tends to look. Her back tenses up, cheeks flush with warmth and color, and her eyes slowly falls shut. There's a noise, soft and gentle in the back of her throat, and that hand on Sable's leg drifts up along bare skin, a familiar feeling echoing in her memory to a night so many weeks ago that suddenly feels like the present again. Her heart flutters in her chest, breath hitches and fingers press down into the soft skin of her thigh. "No," she hisses out as she leans her head away, lips parted and eyes half-lidded, face flushed a warm shade of red.

Her lips say no, but the color on her cheeks says yes.

"I'm— no." Colette stammers, moving her hand away from Sable's leg like it was the hot metal of a stovetop, fingers curled to her palm and hand guarded at her midsection as she takes a careful, but not insulting, step away. "Sable, please, I— " there's a noise in the back of COlette's throat, a junkie presented with a fresh fix makes the same noise, a dog presented with a treat too far out of reach does too. Her dark brows go up, eyes cast askance and she shakes her head slowly.

Apologetically.

She doesn't have the words to explain her feelings, there's complexities and layers there that nothign she has the education for could explain. There's probably poetry about this situation, something about affairs of the heart with plenty of flowery words; she's never read them. Times like these, makes her wish she had.

"The tea's ready…" Colette offers in quiet distraction, looking down to the two cups between them, then to the kettle taken off the fire. It may not be screaming anymore, but it doesn't mean it's not still warm.

Honestly, Sable doesn't give a fuck about the tea right now.

Soothing warmth, the possibility of going to sleep, of not feeling groggy fuzzy headed in the morning, these things do not sound appealing to Sable. They're safe, familiar. Too easy. She steps forward, slowly lifting her hands, movement cautious but deliberate, her yellow eyes on Colette's green ones. That gaze never wavers. Her gentle brush up against Colette's jawline, and rise to catch her cheeks.

"Hon, I swear to god, I'll love you if you let me," the words said with the matter of factness of a small town preacher speaking the Word, "I ain't sayin' you'll love me back, nor sayin' I should even expect you to. But I am sayin' that I won't try. I will, however I can. If you'll let me."

There's no real resistance to the touch, nothing but the close of her eyes and the rise of the corners of her mouth. The kettle comes down, back on the burner it was seated on and Colette turns with those hands on her cheeks. Colette turns, looking over her shoulder to the hallway and the living room, then back to Sable with an apologetic look in her eyes. She turns her cheek, brushing lips across the brunette's palm, and then steps forward towards her, insinuating herself between Sable's knees, arms coming to wrap around her waist in a gentle embrace.

Colette shakes her head, rising up on socked toes, her nose bumping Sables and lips coming up to brush over her forehead. When Colette settles back down, green eyes meet golden-yellow again, and there's an emotional content in that smile that defies words; Mona Lisa are the only four syllables appropriate.

"I know…" is one of the hardest things Colette's said in a good, long while. The only harder thing she said to Tasha, and it wasn't received as she'd hoped. "I know, I know…" green eyes avert, down then up, dark brows lifted in a pleading expression. "If you'd told me… that night, if you'd even— if I'd seen even a glimmer of hope that I was… more'n just— " she smiles, to make the term seem softer than it sounds, "a one-night stand, Sable I'd have never left your bed."

Still shaking her head, Colette lets one arm slide from around the brunette's waist, up to her cheek, a gentle touch that allows her thumb to stroke slowly from beneath her eye to down by her ear. "But you didn't, and I moved on, and… and I met Tasha." Bittersweet is the admission, and Colette's hand stays gently pressed to Sable's cheek.

"We missed our chance," Colette admits in a tiny, hushed voice, "but you're one've the closest people to me right now, aside from her… and I don't want to lose that. I don't want to…" there's a noise in the back of Colette's throat. "I don't want to lose you in a second way."

The gentleness, the warmth with which Colette lets Sable down should have turned the most grave of declarers into a fumbling but mild apologist. But something is keeping Sable afloat, something steady and determined in her eyes. Like she knows this is the very end, a last stand.

"Kiss me," Sable says, "Once. As if I had, that night. Don' hold nothin' back. But just one kiss. After that, never again unless you ask me. That way I can walk away, at least knowin'." Knowing what, precisely? That she really can't be persuaded? What it would have been like if it could be? What she'll be missing.

As it is, the request stands.

It's stands for a long, long moment of silence.

Colette just stares at Sable, cheeks flushed and eyes wide and only now can she feel the slightest tremble there in the younger girl's hands. Teeth toy at her lower lip, Colette's throat works up and down in a swallow, and green eyes flick from side to side in searching quality to Sable's catlike stare. She breathes, only now realizing she's been forgetting to, and Colette is left to wonder if Sable can hear the sound of her heart pounding in her chest.

Is Sable's ability persuasion? It certainly feels that way.

There's a deep breath, slow and steady, and Colette rises up on her toes to let her nose brush against Sable's. She can feel the other girl's breath on her lips, reciprocated from Colette's own feathery exhalations. The warmth radiated out from her face is palpable, lips come close, but never truly find their home. Instead, Colette lets her cheek brush over Sable's, coming to find her right ear, and with her eyes falling shut she whispers warmly and softly into the yellow-eyed girl's ear.

It's a sibilant hiss of breath, warm against Sable's ear, and is accompanied by a tightening embrace of Colette's arm around Sable. Her other hand comes up, fingers raking thorugh the back of Sable's hair, and what she whispers is more than a kiss. It's embarrassing, descriptive, salcaious and fiery. Thirty seconds, or there abouts, is what Colette affords to herself as she breathily describes in detail that would make John Logan himself blush exactly what would have happened that night, and from the way she speaks, it's been on her mind for a long time.

It's not a kiss, not by the longest stretch of the imagination, but in a way those words and that honesty is more intimate than any kiss could be. There's some things you don't ever say to a stranger, some things you don't ever say even to a lover, but there it is.

There it is.

Shuddering out a breath as she lands back down on her heels, Colette's face is flushed a warm cherry red that feathers all the way down to her neckline and delicate collar bones. She lifts a hand, warm palm brushing across Sable's cheek and letting her thumb touch once across the musician's bottom lip.

Colette smiles, sheepishly, and as if to try and shake how those words made her feel off from her mind she adds, "I still want to hear you sing La Mer, someday…"

I think you broke her.

If this conversation was a battle field, and Sable thought she'd won and raised her flag, Colette would have replaced the banner of victory with Sable's boy shorts. Foul mouthed and sexually aggressive though she may be, she is struck dumb. Game and match - the yellow eyed girl has no comeback. She doesn't even try and catch that thumb with her lips, and it's too late by the time she comes to herself. She nods, mutely.

"I… I'll set about learnin' it. And I'll be happy to play it. Any time you ask." Sable says, with a ghost more emphasis on the last words, echoing their first iteration, and their first intention with it.

Furrowing her brows, there's a warm if not somewhat embarrassed smile on Colette's lips. She rises up onto her toes, noses at Sable's forehead, then settles down again and steps past her to pick up the kettle in one hand, watching the yellow-eyed girl thoughtfully. Upending it, the kettle pours steaming hot water down into each of the mugs, and there's a fond smile that stays across Colette's lips as she prepares the tea, then sets the kettle back down. Picking up Sable's mug, not Tasha's, the teen lifts it up to her lips and takes a slow, thoughtful sip. "For the record…"

Colette's green eyes regard Sable over the top of the mug, steam wafting up in front of her eyes. "I would've loved you to."

And that's the honest truth.


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