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writetomyheart2015-03-29 03:31 am
nachtegael.livejournal.com) wrote in writetomyheart2015-03-29 03:31 am
Entry tags:
[Team Five] Beautiful Stranger
This au is based on this photo and mostly inspired because Catbear and enShanti screamed at me for Amber//Gain.
In other words, blue hair is HOT.
Amber didn't need her either, the sleeping form huddled beneath the twist of blankets on her bed. Amber didn't need her, but she sure wanted her as soon as she saw the glint of her hoop earrings swing beneath the chopped layers of her thick blue bob. Amber feels another thrill of want run through her core at the memory and she turns the handle of the faucet all the way to cold. She splashes the liquid over her face til she's gasping for air and the joints of her fingers twinge in protest of the extreme temperature change.
Amber wipes back the drips of blonde hair from her eyes and blinks the wet from her lashes. She doesn't have time for a shower, and she doesn't want to strip down all the way while...what's her face is still asleep between her plum colored sheets. The lock on the bathroom door broke two days ago and Amber doesn't have time to fix that either.
Work has been a bitch lately, and the papercuts lacing her fingers sting when the suds of her facial cleanser foam into the cracks in her skin. It's some kind of acne clearing formula, fortified with volcanic ash and tiny particles of charcoal mixed in. Amber splashes her face again, this time with a stream from the cold tap, and shoves the bottle of face wash behind her liter size bottle of discount shampoo.
She can't even remember the name of the woman she brought home from the club last night but Amber doesn't want her to find out she still has issues with breakouts at a certain time of the month. It's a defense mechanism, she tells herself as she scrubs her chin on a hand towel, it's completely normal to be shy about things like that.
She's not sure why this encounter has her nerves still buzzing with excitement the morning after--their discarded clothes now rumpled on the floorboards and all the secrets of skin beneath them laid bare hours before. She's never felt this shy before the next day, which is weird, but Amber doesn't have time to psychoanalyze the uneasy twist in her gut so she just blames it on hunger.
She kicks open the door to her bedroom, huffing when a wet strand of hair plasters itself across the slope of her cheek and tries to poke between her lips. She's 25, after all, too old to be embarrassed about the condition of her skin in front of a one-night stand she shamelessly stripped before last night.
Amber shivers when the cool draft of air in the bedroom hits her damp skin. She hunts through the pile of clean, unfolded laundry on her dresser for a new bra and shivers again when she remembers the slice of carmine fingernails pressing red grooves between her ribs a few hours earlier.
The woman still curled in Amber's bed had lifted the lacy cups of her bra away from her chest with the gentlest touch, but the nail marks she left between Amber's shoulder blades are jagged in the mirror when Amber twists her head around for a peek. They sting too, but it's the kind of burn she can savor--cranberries and vodka, or grapefruit juice funneled straight through a straw against the back of her parched throat.
Over her plain black bra Amber layers a nude camisole and buttons up a white shirt. The sleeve are a bit rumpled because she always forgets to hang her laundry straight out of the dryer while they're still a bit damp. The collar lays flat around the hollows of her throat though, and Amber examines her silhouette in the mirror until she's satisfied. She looks good today. Not amazing, but definitely presentable which is all she really needs for her shift at her weekend job.
Next comes eyeliner, today a matte black kohl because she's not headed somewhere she can bring her turquoise glitter. Amber is so intent on stroking on the liner, her eyes crossing a bit with such narrow focus, that she doesn't notice the fuzzy blue head watching her in the reflection until she speaks.
"Hi," the beautiful stranger says, and Amber streaks a thick smear of kohl across the bridge of her nose.
"Hi," Amber croaks back. Her voice is always rough in the mornings before she downs half a pot of coffee and a greasy fried egg slurped straight from the frying pan with a fork. She wonders if her guest eats breakfast off of plates, or if she even eats eggs at all.
"Um, Amber--"
Amber flinches at the mention of her name, startled at the purr of the other woman's voice that's just as rich and smooth as it was the night before. She feels her cheeks start to heat as their eye contact in the glass reflection stretches into something uncomfortable, interminable, something she wants to swallow down with a hard gulp of air but doesn't want to let settle in her stomach. Amber needs to save room for breakfast and also for the doughnuts and rice cakes that will be shoved at her where she's headed.
"Amber," the stranger repeats, pushing the periwinkle haze of fine hair across her forehead and behind her ears, "do you mind if I...?" She points to the open doorway with a crimson nail that almost looks a dark salmon pink in the feathery beams of early light.
Amber isn't sure if she means she's ready to catch a cab home or if she just wants to use the bathroom but she nods her assent, open mouthed. The wings of blue hair fall away from their moorings behind the stranger's ears as she steps to the floor and wanders into the hall.
Amber doesn't like this feeling, the loss of control expanding between her ribs as the woman slides out of view. She doesn't like that she can't remember the name to match the blue waves that left shadows of sleep on her pillow cases. She buckles on her watch, not the black and green one with the rubber band and the nanosecond stopwatch. Today she needs the copper plated one with the boring analogue face. It fits beneath the fitted cuff of her suit jacket and only clashes with the black and white as much as her bleach blonde pixie cut will stand out in the sea of balding black and ahjumma perms at the funeral parlor.
The sink runs cold in the kitchen when Amber rinses the pale skin of a mushy tomato above the chrome basin. The shower is running in the bathroom, so she can't really expect the sink to put forth hot water. The knife blade bites into the fruit with uneven strokes and the bits of flesh that smear a faded red along Amber's crisscrossing paper cuts feel grainy. She sighs, but it's her fault for buying tomatoes out of season, in winter. Sometimes she forgets that she's not in California anymore, and that the wind blows cold outside her 12th story window.
Amber's copper plated watch says she's already 17 minutes late as she slips into scuffed black flats. She scuffs her heels against the tiles in the hall and keeps her impatient thoughts to herself while she waits for scarlet tipped fingers to thread tangled shoelaces back through the the steel grommets of a pair of blue converse. Amber chews on her lip, but it's her fault for going out and coming home with a somebody the night before this visitation.
The faded canvas of the stranger's shoes matches the bobbed hair plastered against the back of her head, still wet from the shower, but they clash against the dull olive tweed of her spring weight coat. They both shiver when they step out into the parking lot, the stranger who's pretending the February wind already sings of spring, and Amber who's trying and failing not to think about where she's headed.
+++++++++++++++++
"Thank you for coming." Amber's lipstick feels like the skin on scalded milk, clingy and almost rubbery in texture when she slides her lips together. The family members who nod in acknowledgement and slip past her with footsteps deadened on the cushy green carpet don't seem to notice her discomfort, or anything about her really. Amber straightens the magnetic name tag clipped to the lapel of her jacket and tries her best to look welcoming anyway.
She's not prepared for the sight of still damp waves that flounce across the carpet in blue ripples, advancing from the double glass doors to her post at the double wooden ones. A curse almost slips through Amber's lips, her mouth rounding the syllables in quivers of disbelief.
The approaching visitor raises her head to meet Amber's gaze through the lush waterfall of her frizzing hair. Her languid blink is less feral with all but the faintest traces of eye makeup scrubbed from her face in the steam of Amber's shower.
"Welcome," Amber says, but she forgets to punctuate it with a sympathetic smile somewhere between the curve of the stranger's eyebrows and lilt of her lemonade pink lips.
"Thanks." The soft pink lips part with a hesitant sigh that trails behind her striding footsteps into the visitation room.
After another 15 minutes of greeting visitors and directing them to sign the guest book with a plumed ink pen Amber is relieved of her post by Taemin, one of the regulars at the funeral parlor. She herself only comes in to cover shift on weekends when one of the full timers can't make it in to work. That happens about twice a month usually and she doesn't make a habit of coming in hungover, but Amber is grateful to trade stations with Taemin and take over the refreshments table for a bit.
It makes her feel a bit better to stand next to the coffee dispenser and inhale the bitter steam as she hands out styrofoam cups to grandparents and doughnuts stuck by their glaze to paper napkins to the kids in the room. Standing inside the spacious room is always more interesting than being stationed in the hall, anyway. Here she can wink at the grade school boys weaving in and out between the empty rows of wooden chairs and count the flashy rhinestone barettes clipped in their sisters' hair if she gets bored.
Today Amber watches her stranger make laps around the carpeted room. The meandering figure balances a cup of steaming coffee on her palm as she wanders from group to group of other mourners dispersed around the perimeter of the room. She doesn't take off her overcoat, and Amber assumes she must still be wearing the slashed jean cutoffs and silky purple tank she had on when Amber first set eyes on her in the club.
The shirt had looked a shade between rose and salmon in the flashing golden strobes on the dance floor. Amber didn't realize the polyester pleats were a muted plum in color until she was locking her front door behind them this morning. Amber likes purple more than pink, anyway. But she likes blue even better.
It's nearing noon by the time the olive tweed coat weaves its way through the clusters of black and gray suits and comes to a stop in front of Amber's table. Amber peers into the dull pool of cold coffee washing across the bottom of the styrofoam held out to her. "Refill?"
"Please." Red fingernails bite half moons into the smooth white foam as she hands the cup over. Amber notices the tiny chips pockmarking the tips of the visitor's pinky fingernails as she pours out another serving of scalding coffee.
"My condolences," Amber says with a slight smile as she hands the drink back with careful hands. She's surprised at her own confidence, not because she's usually awkward at work, or even in general, but because the beautiful blue edges of this stranger, her stranger, make Amber's pulse thrum against the creases of her wrists and throb against the copper band of her watch.
"Thanks," the pale pink lips trace out the word under Amber's intrigued gaze. "Mr. Park was my homeroom teacher. Third year of high school. He used to tape caramels to our homework papers if we got a perfect score."
"Wow," Amber says, her voice catching on a note of surprise. Dark eyes flash amusement at her, and Amber's mouth decides to curl up and return the soft smile of it's own volition.
"He used to tease me. He called me Lady Gaga if he caught me goofing off, singing pop songs too loud during classroom clean up time before dinner."
"Wow!" Amber says again, and this time her grin against stretches at the limits of her lips, straining the equation of her professional smile.
"Oh, he just thought I was cute." She winks, and Amber remembers the flutter of black-blue lashes against her cheek, against her throat, against the quivering slope of her belly.
"He's not the only one." Amber winks back, surprising a smile out of her stranger that shakes her finger combed hair into a blueberry breeze.
"I'm Gain." She leans in to whisper the words to Amber as if she's murmuring a sentence heavy with fond memories and the bittersweet shadows of late summer, the sort of thing visitors are supposed to say at a visitation, emptying their recollections before the propped open casket like so many wilting flowers.
Gain is the flower though, in this room, in Amber's eyes, and she's even prettier here in the daylight than Amber remembers from under the hot flash of the strobes. Gain giggles under Amber's unabashed stare and her voice is sweet June breeze, the sunny promise of lazy days spent together in the filtered shade falling through lacy green foliage.
"Let me give you my number." Gain opens her palms to receive Amber's phone and Amber opens her heart, the last of her discomfort felt in Gain's presence evaporating with the hiss of steam from the coffee maker.
tagging![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
singilu ~~
In other words, blue hair is HOT.
Amber didn't need her either, the sleeping form huddled beneath the twist of blankets on her bed. Amber didn't need her, but she sure wanted her as soon as she saw the glint of her hoop earrings swing beneath the chopped layers of her thick blue bob. Amber feels another thrill of want run through her core at the memory and she turns the handle of the faucet all the way to cold. She splashes the liquid over her face til she's gasping for air and the joints of her fingers twinge in protest of the extreme temperature change.
Amber wipes back the drips of blonde hair from her eyes and blinks the wet from her lashes. She doesn't have time for a shower, and she doesn't want to strip down all the way while...what's her face is still asleep between her plum colored sheets. The lock on the bathroom door broke two days ago and Amber doesn't have time to fix that either.
Work has been a bitch lately, and the papercuts lacing her fingers sting when the suds of her facial cleanser foam into the cracks in her skin. It's some kind of acne clearing formula, fortified with volcanic ash and tiny particles of charcoal mixed in. Amber splashes her face again, this time with a stream from the cold tap, and shoves the bottle of face wash behind her liter size bottle of discount shampoo.
She can't even remember the name of the woman she brought home from the club last night but Amber doesn't want her to find out she still has issues with breakouts at a certain time of the month. It's a defense mechanism, she tells herself as she scrubs her chin on a hand towel, it's completely normal to be shy about things like that.
She's not sure why this encounter has her nerves still buzzing with excitement the morning after--their discarded clothes now rumpled on the floorboards and all the secrets of skin beneath them laid bare hours before. She's never felt this shy before the next day, which is weird, but Amber doesn't have time to psychoanalyze the uneasy twist in her gut so she just blames it on hunger.
She kicks open the door to her bedroom, huffing when a wet strand of hair plasters itself across the slope of her cheek and tries to poke between her lips. She's 25, after all, too old to be embarrassed about the condition of her skin in front of a one-night stand she shamelessly stripped before last night.
Amber shivers when the cool draft of air in the bedroom hits her damp skin. She hunts through the pile of clean, unfolded laundry on her dresser for a new bra and shivers again when she remembers the slice of carmine fingernails pressing red grooves between her ribs a few hours earlier.
The woman still curled in Amber's bed had lifted the lacy cups of her bra away from her chest with the gentlest touch, but the nail marks she left between Amber's shoulder blades are jagged in the mirror when Amber twists her head around for a peek. They sting too, but it's the kind of burn she can savor--cranberries and vodka, or grapefruit juice funneled straight through a straw against the back of her parched throat.
Over her plain black bra Amber layers a nude camisole and buttons up a white shirt. The sleeve are a bit rumpled because she always forgets to hang her laundry straight out of the dryer while they're still a bit damp. The collar lays flat around the hollows of her throat though, and Amber examines her silhouette in the mirror until she's satisfied. She looks good today. Not amazing, but definitely presentable which is all she really needs for her shift at her weekend job.
Next comes eyeliner, today a matte black kohl because she's not headed somewhere she can bring her turquoise glitter. Amber is so intent on stroking on the liner, her eyes crossing a bit with such narrow focus, that she doesn't notice the fuzzy blue head watching her in the reflection until she speaks.
"Hi," the beautiful stranger says, and Amber streaks a thick smear of kohl across the bridge of her nose.
"Hi," Amber croaks back. Her voice is always rough in the mornings before she downs half a pot of coffee and a greasy fried egg slurped straight from the frying pan with a fork. She wonders if her guest eats breakfast off of plates, or if she even eats eggs at all.
"Um, Amber--"
Amber flinches at the mention of her name, startled at the purr of the other woman's voice that's just as rich and smooth as it was the night before. She feels her cheeks start to heat as their eye contact in the glass reflection stretches into something uncomfortable, interminable, something she wants to swallow down with a hard gulp of air but doesn't want to let settle in her stomach. Amber needs to save room for breakfast and also for the doughnuts and rice cakes that will be shoved at her where she's headed.
"Amber," the stranger repeats, pushing the periwinkle haze of fine hair across her forehead and behind her ears, "do you mind if I...?" She points to the open doorway with a crimson nail that almost looks a dark salmon pink in the feathery beams of early light.
Amber isn't sure if she means she's ready to catch a cab home or if she just wants to use the bathroom but she nods her assent, open mouthed. The wings of blue hair fall away from their moorings behind the stranger's ears as she steps to the floor and wanders into the hall.
Amber doesn't like this feeling, the loss of control expanding between her ribs as the woman slides out of view. She doesn't like that she can't remember the name to match the blue waves that left shadows of sleep on her pillow cases. She buckles on her watch, not the black and green one with the rubber band and the nanosecond stopwatch. Today she needs the copper plated one with the boring analogue face. It fits beneath the fitted cuff of her suit jacket and only clashes with the black and white as much as her bleach blonde pixie cut will stand out in the sea of balding black and ahjumma perms at the funeral parlor.
The sink runs cold in the kitchen when Amber rinses the pale skin of a mushy tomato above the chrome basin. The shower is running in the bathroom, so she can't really expect the sink to put forth hot water. The knife blade bites into the fruit with uneven strokes and the bits of flesh that smear a faded red along Amber's crisscrossing paper cuts feel grainy. She sighs, but it's her fault for buying tomatoes out of season, in winter. Sometimes she forgets that she's not in California anymore, and that the wind blows cold outside her 12th story window.
Amber's copper plated watch says she's already 17 minutes late as she slips into scuffed black flats. She scuffs her heels against the tiles in the hall and keeps her impatient thoughts to herself while she waits for scarlet tipped fingers to thread tangled shoelaces back through the the steel grommets of a pair of blue converse. Amber chews on her lip, but it's her fault for going out and coming home with a somebody the night before this visitation.
The faded canvas of the stranger's shoes matches the bobbed hair plastered against the back of her head, still wet from the shower, but they clash against the dull olive tweed of her spring weight coat. They both shiver when they step out into the parking lot, the stranger who's pretending the February wind already sings of spring, and Amber who's trying and failing not to think about where she's headed.
+++++++++++++++++
"Thank you for coming." Amber's lipstick feels like the skin on scalded milk, clingy and almost rubbery in texture when she slides her lips together. The family members who nod in acknowledgement and slip past her with footsteps deadened on the cushy green carpet don't seem to notice her discomfort, or anything about her really. Amber straightens the magnetic name tag clipped to the lapel of her jacket and tries her best to look welcoming anyway.
She's not prepared for the sight of still damp waves that flounce across the carpet in blue ripples, advancing from the double glass doors to her post at the double wooden ones. A curse almost slips through Amber's lips, her mouth rounding the syllables in quivers of disbelief.
The approaching visitor raises her head to meet Amber's gaze through the lush waterfall of her frizzing hair. Her languid blink is less feral with all but the faintest traces of eye makeup scrubbed from her face in the steam of Amber's shower.
"Welcome," Amber says, but she forgets to punctuate it with a sympathetic smile somewhere between the curve of the stranger's eyebrows and lilt of her lemonade pink lips.
"Thanks." The soft pink lips part with a hesitant sigh that trails behind her striding footsteps into the visitation room.
After another 15 minutes of greeting visitors and directing them to sign the guest book with a plumed ink pen Amber is relieved of her post by Taemin, one of the regulars at the funeral parlor. She herself only comes in to cover shift on weekends when one of the full timers can't make it in to work. That happens about twice a month usually and she doesn't make a habit of coming in hungover, but Amber is grateful to trade stations with Taemin and take over the refreshments table for a bit.
It makes her feel a bit better to stand next to the coffee dispenser and inhale the bitter steam as she hands out styrofoam cups to grandparents and doughnuts stuck by their glaze to paper napkins to the kids in the room. Standing inside the spacious room is always more interesting than being stationed in the hall, anyway. Here she can wink at the grade school boys weaving in and out between the empty rows of wooden chairs and count the flashy rhinestone barettes clipped in their sisters' hair if she gets bored.
Today Amber watches her stranger make laps around the carpeted room. The meandering figure balances a cup of steaming coffee on her palm as she wanders from group to group of other mourners dispersed around the perimeter of the room. She doesn't take off her overcoat, and Amber assumes she must still be wearing the slashed jean cutoffs and silky purple tank she had on when Amber first set eyes on her in the club.
The shirt had looked a shade between rose and salmon in the flashing golden strobes on the dance floor. Amber didn't realize the polyester pleats were a muted plum in color until she was locking her front door behind them this morning. Amber likes purple more than pink, anyway. But she likes blue even better.
It's nearing noon by the time the olive tweed coat weaves its way through the clusters of black and gray suits and comes to a stop in front of Amber's table. Amber peers into the dull pool of cold coffee washing across the bottom of the styrofoam held out to her. "Refill?"
"Please." Red fingernails bite half moons into the smooth white foam as she hands the cup over. Amber notices the tiny chips pockmarking the tips of the visitor's pinky fingernails as she pours out another serving of scalding coffee.
"My condolences," Amber says with a slight smile as she hands the drink back with careful hands. She's surprised at her own confidence, not because she's usually awkward at work, or even in general, but because the beautiful blue edges of this stranger, her stranger, make Amber's pulse thrum against the creases of her wrists and throb against the copper band of her watch.
"Thanks," the pale pink lips trace out the word under Amber's intrigued gaze. "Mr. Park was my homeroom teacher. Third year of high school. He used to tape caramels to our homework papers if we got a perfect score."
"Wow," Amber says, her voice catching on a note of surprise. Dark eyes flash amusement at her, and Amber's mouth decides to curl up and return the soft smile of it's own volition.
"He used to tease me. He called me Lady Gaga if he caught me goofing off, singing pop songs too loud during classroom clean up time before dinner."
"Wow!" Amber says again, and this time her grin against stretches at the limits of her lips, straining the equation of her professional smile.
"Oh, he just thought I was cute." She winks, and Amber remembers the flutter of black-blue lashes against her cheek, against her throat, against the quivering slope of her belly.
"He's not the only one." Amber winks back, surprising a smile out of her stranger that shakes her finger combed hair into a blueberry breeze.
"I'm Gain." She leans in to whisper the words to Amber as if she's murmuring a sentence heavy with fond memories and the bittersweet shadows of late summer, the sort of thing visitors are supposed to say at a visitation, emptying their recollections before the propped open casket like so many wilting flowers.
Gain is the flower though, in this room, in Amber's eyes, and she's even prettier here in the daylight than Amber remembers from under the hot flash of the strobes. Gain giggles under Amber's unabashed stare and her voice is sweet June breeze, the sunny promise of lazy days spent together in the filtered shade falling through lacy green foliage.
"Let me give you my number." Gain opens her palms to receive Amber's phone and Amber opens her heart, the last of her discomfort felt in Gain's presence evaporating with the hiss of steam from the coffee maker.
tagging
singilu ~~