Waiting On the Big Hand

"But sometimes, you've got to make them work yourself…"

The Last Name

She smiles, and her eyes crinkle like small pages in a magazine being pressed together like an impatient accordion. They're light and almond shaped, or almost like an almond if it wasn't for the low dip on the bottom of her eye, drawing out the mysterious allure and replacing it with Alice-in-wonderland-like curiosity. Soft and brown, he's sure that they can see right through him. Naivety paves a path of intelligence and understanding, he thinks. But she doesn't know that he thinks that, and she goes on with the velvet pink rose petal lips and rippling blonde hair, and turns her direction to the papers on her desk, and to the steam rolling from the fresh cup of coffee. Her suit is black, and professional, surely with her perfectionist ways, starched to submission, her rose perfume sprinkled immaculately in whispers across the soft skin of her collarbone. Her nails are painted red. The second finger on her right hand is chipped.

He notices the wrinkle below her eyes as she squints at the fine print text on the paper.

She writes someone's last name next to her own and sighs, chin cradled in the dip of her palm.

A shadow across the hallway, he stands, and continues to watch.

Withheld

His face is cragged, almost aged but not the point of being decrepit. It's to the point of a hint that he's had a rough past. He's sure to have a rough and tumble future too, but for the sake of his sanity, he'd rather not think about it until he's well over the age of dead. His eyes are in contrast to hers, they're not soft and inviting, they're sharp, and cutting into others like his tongue whips words that are taboo. They're a biting blue, shivering ice-like iris's that can pinpoint a target almost a mile away, and that can sense the fear of others. He is not like her at all, he thinks. She's soft and smiles and he's like a rock on the highest peak of a mountain, hard and sturdy and impossible to get. His hair is a wild array of layers and vibrant dyed colors, swept across his forehead.

His smile is obscure, and almost never elated, just seeking a placid smirk that burns deep in her stomach. Yet, she finds that when he turns around, shoulders slumped, head down as if in a sick delusional prayer, he's searching for that hint of innocence left in a smokescreen of resentment.

She's writing his last name to her first, and through the steam of her coffee, she can see his silhouette slipping across the hallway. He runs his hand through his hair anxiously, unaware.

She holds her face in her hand, and continues to wonder why they wait for the clock to turn thirteen.

Destroy all Monsters

The snow is falling, again.

She's always liked it, liked staring at it while her head is propped past the windowsill, her shoulders halfway out while her eyes are closed, feeling the familiar pricks of ice melt in little specks on her quivering eyelids. It's always white, never grey, never red, and never yellow. It's just plain, it's silver. But it's not perfect, because the flakes, they're all different, full of nooks and crannies and cryptic little needles and points that don't mean a thing—but, oh, they do, oh they do.

There's hot chocolate sitting on her desk, steamy and sweet with melting puddles of milky white marshmallow sinking into the steam like her heart sinks into her stomach when he speaks. And abruptly it lurches, while she's taking her time to turn around, because she can see the faint reflection of him standing in her doorway, hands in his pockets. He takes one out to wave, and when she doesn't move, he plucks the papers off her desk, neatly stacking them to the side before he perches so much like a red cardinal on the edge of her desk. They're quiet.

And she wishes so, so, much, that if it could break the silence, the falling snow would pound against the glass like a thousand needles of ice cold light exploding into sparks of thunder. But they don't, they're just parachuting down to the ground, waltzing with the breeze in an unceremonious ballet. And she has no choice but to turn around. He croaks before covering it up with a large slurp from her cup. She doesn't once blame him; after all, it is cold outside, and she can barely remember how to speak.

But, he does, and as he sets the cup back down, half empty, the rim still sticky with foam and marshmallow, he smirks, but it's gentle this time. She looks out at the snow again, before smiling a soft grin on her own.

"Snow…this year it makes me want to just go outside and spin myself half to death..." she covers her mouth with one hand, watching his smirk grow a bit larger as the blush stains a bit deeper on her cheeks. "That's…pretty dumb, huh?"

He picks himself up, gesturing with a lazy flap of his wrist towards the open doorway. "Wanna dance?"

They don't say anything more, but they both decide as they stand under the snow, not really dancing but not really standing still either, that waiting a little longer could be done.

She finds herself asking him to break the clock on the wall.

And he replies in a confused, but still soft amusing chuckle, that he'll make sure that it 'never ticks again.'

The snow falls.

Sun is Golden

Days pass by, slowly winking into the shadows.

The bandages around her waist crinkle against the silk of her blouse; they ripple and stick to the pale peach fuzz of her skin. They are damp with the perspiration of hours.

She sits with the blinds closed in awkward silence, lips set stonily into a grim line as she watched the time creep across her beige walls like the slithering skin of a snake. She feels like a snake.

Feels like eating the world. Eating herself to death. Eating the bullet in her drawer.

Silently, he leans against the wall with eyes like shards of green. She knows she won't do it.

(He knows it too.)

An hour passes, and she stares. The clock hits the last hour of her day at work and he sighs, gently easing himself from the crouched position he's taken on for the past forty-five minutes.

She closes her eyes, but instead there's the whip of fabric, and a chuckle. Her eyes are no longer brown, but they are a tawny chocolate, rippling against the sunset.

He smiles, before sauntering over to rest his cheek against the top of her head.

"The view's the only good thing about this damn job…"

She looks thoughtfully into the sun, hearing the clock tick and feeling his breath tickle against the shell of her ear. Her hand finds his.

"Nah…It has its other perks…"

And the sun's so bright; they never have time to realize that the blood red of the report is still there.

Skyline Tango

Smoke dances from the building pipes in grey sputtering puddles of dust. Silently, they sit on the edge of her desk, her hands wrapped around a hot cup of coffee, and his are busily tinkering with the remains of a mangled wall-market standard clock. They are lean and thin, needlelike with precision as he deftly removes small wires and twists them expertly together.

She watches the clouds flush purple and glimmer orange. She watches them hide behind the skyline of buildings, the skyscrapers leaning in a frozen arabesque. She sighs quietly, listens to the rumble of traffic, and continues to watch and wonder.

She wonders if he is watching her. (But she's too afraid to find out.)

He's not. Instead, his eyes are directed at the face of the clock, twitching in irregular circles as he holds a blank circle of flexible plastic in one hand, and molded wires in the other. The cogs have all fit, and so have the pegs. (It may run rusty, and it may be thrift, but it's there at least, and he thinks that's what really matters after all.)

The only thing left is to make the time.

So, he twists and he pulls in a graceful determination, and he glues with little pricks of sticky dew, and he grins with his tongue poking out from between his lips. And soon enough, it's done.

She still watches the smoke curl from the side of a building, but she looks at him when he pokes her shoulder.

And he is smiling at her, with the clock held in one hand, face down.

He manages to catch his breath enough to brush that nonexistent hair off of her cheek, and then hands her the clock.

"So…what time is it?" He says with a smile and a lift to his lips.

And she smiles, skyline forgotten.

It's the first occasion, time has ever turned thirteen.

End

A/N:

It's been way too long since I've written a proper Elena/Reno, and lemme tell you…it's good to get off my chest. With this pairing I always manage to go into drabble mode. What is up with that exactly, anyway?

Haha, enjoy.

TMoh