Lately, I have been flirting with the idea of random encounters between the Athrun and Cagalli who are strangers to each other; and I'm loving it.

For all the hopeless romantics reading this.

Cigarettes
…it was just another tequila sunrise.

Athrun stood out on the balcony of his bachelor pad; cigarette burning slowly in one hand, bottle of tequila in the other. The cigarette was burning faster than he was smoking it. The tequila was being nursed even slower than the cigarette. His white shirt had an interesting neo-art print on it with text which served an aesthetic purpose more than the message it carried. It was faintly crumpled, especially down the chest, and unbuttoned to expose his washboard abs. The belt on his jeans was unbuckled and hung free as thought he'd quickly redressed after sex.

Cagalli walked out onto her balcony. It was one of those rare nights she had worn a dress out. The simple striped garment adorned her curves. The high polo neck of the dress looked sexy because of the low cut back. Her feet were bare and her toes painted in Revlon Red. She drew a cigarette from the pack in her hand, lighting it instantly and enjoying the long first drag.

They saw and acknowledged each other with a nod. They both smoked their cigarettes leaning on the ornate railings framing their balconies. They rarely spoke to each other and almost never smiled at each other. They would just stand in silence on their adjacent verandas, inhaling toxic fumes from their cigarettes and exhaling smoke.

They would watch each other, but never secretly.

Athrun liked the way cigarettes looked in her fingers. They were almost as long and slender as the stick of nicotine they held. Today, her nails were a red that matched her toes. Usually they would be painted contrasting colours. Each colour would last for a week at most. Her blonde hair was loose and fell past her shoulders and eyelashes. The tousled mess suited her face, her body and in all probability her personality - if he had known anything about it. He admired her body. He did not like models – they were too thin; but he did not like chubby either. Hers was just the right mixture of lean and curvy. She, however, seemed to have fire in her eyes which was probably the reflection of feistiness. He'd never played with feistiness. He'd never bothered meandering outside his taste for bubblegum and sex.

Cagalli loved the broadness of his shoulders and his washboard abs. He made mannequins green with envy with the way he made his wardrobe look. His genetics had given him quirky features – navy hair, emerald eyes, a planar face. The first time she'd seen him on this balcony, she thought that maybe he was once a Michael Angelo sculpture and was brought to life because of how beautiful he was. He naturally had a girl over as often as he could afford. She rarely saw the same girl repeatedly; she never bothered to pay attention.

They both let out a large sigh with a puff of smoke. Their eyes were absently tracing the faint constellations in the city sky. Stars were visible as rarely as the two smiled at each other. Still, neither of them would survive outside the core of the city. Should their life slow down even a little, they would both dissolve into the temporal axis of the cosmos.

"When did women become so easy?"
"When did men slow down so much?"

The two sentences were mumbled simultaneously. This sparked eye contact. And conversation. This dawn was becoming a concoction of extremely rare occurrences.

"Women – buy them a drink and they are all over you. They want to skip foreplay and jump straight into bed. Some don't even wait for the bed; they like the thrill of the not-so-dark shadows of clubs. When did the chase go out of style?" Athrun asked absently, his eyes back on the dark sky.

"Probably when sex became the new nightcap," Cagalli offered, punctuating her sentence with a long drag.

Athrun released a small chuckle with his next puff of smoke. "And how are men slowing down? How can they? Women are such sexual predators now-a-days."

"They sit with you all night long, buying you drink after drink, making small talk – stupendously boring small talk at that – because they are terrified of coming across as horny. Sometimes, most times all we want is to kiss you, especially if you look good. And we'll keep kissing you if you are any good at it." Cagalli explained, letting her cigarette burn as she spoke. "Why should I care about your boss and your work on a Friday night?"

Athrun laughed at the unfamiliarity of the scenario. "I thought people went to clubs to forget about work."

"I guess its progress," Cagalli shrugged, watching Athrun bring the bottle to his lips, "In the frenzy to give the other party what we think they want we miss out on what they actually want."

"Why is it so complicated?" he asked, as the bottle clinked against the cold metal railing.

"I don't know…" Cagalli's words lingered between them for a long while, "It really shouldn't be."

"The simplest things get tangled in such complex webs sometimes," he sighed, throwing the filter of his smoked cigarette over the railing. They watched it hit the cold asphalt of the parking lot thirty floors beneath them.

"Simplicity, just once…" they said in unison, sharing a smile.

"You know, like," Athrun started, following with a skit of the perfect situation.

"Hi, I noticed you have amber eyes," he said, approaching Cagalli until only the two metal bars and a foot of missing concrete separated them. "You know what they say about people with amber eyes…"

Cagalli looked up into his emerald eyes, intrigued. "That they are extremely friendly?" she guessed.

"Are they?" he continued.

"They must be," she concluded, "Otherwise you wouldn't approach them so freely."

She smiled as he chuckled. "You're right. I've never thought about it that way."

"You are quite daring, then, aren't you?" She asked rhetorically as he smiled at her. "What is it then, about people with amber eyes?" She expected an answer this time.

"They say people with amber eyes love tequila," he replied. "Is it true?"

Her laughter was a pleasant, tinkering sound. "Very."

"Then allow me to share some with you." Athrun held his bottle out to Cagalli. "Drinking alone is quite pitiful."

"I'll put you out of your misery then," Cagalli said closing the distance between them as best she could. She took a few generous sips of the golden liquid.

"It matches your eyes well," he absently commented as she returned the bottle. "Golden, reflective, liquid."

She smiled at him. "You know, of all the men I've spoken to, you are the only one who has talked about my eyes."

"That is surprising." His expression matched his words. "They are the first thing I noticed about you." Athrun was no longer enacting the perfect scenario.

"It goes to show how interested men actually are, I guess." Cagalli reached for another cigarette and Athrun for his lighter. Chivalry wasn't dead tonight.

"So, that must mean I'm interested," he said leaning into the railing.

Cagalli smirked, "Very, very interested." She held out her pack of cigarettes to Athrun, offering him one.

He reached for the pack but closed his hand around her wrist and pulled her in towards him. Leaning forward, he made their lips meet, his fingertips tracing her arm from her wrist to her neck. His hand snuck into the crevice on the back of her neck. Her hair tickled the back of his hand as he pulled her deeper into the kiss. One of her hands closed tightly around the precious pack of cigarettes while the other lingered on the railing.

They kissed until Cagalli's freshly lit cigarette had burned through to the filter. The kisses were so absorbing that they did not notice the awkward distance between them as they were held apart by the railings.

When they broke apart, they looked into each other's eyes with no discomfort loitering between them.

"See…" Athrun started.

"…so simple," Cagalli finished.

A few more moments passed as they glanced into each others' eyes after which they backed away from each other slowly. Athrun turned towards the French windows of his apartment, tequila bottle in tow. Cagalli lit another cigarette to replace the one that had burned to ashes without her help.

"Good night," she called after him as he slid the window open.

He turned to look at her one final time as the sun rose. "Good night."

Playing with fire could be dangerous…
but it would definitely be memorable.

Random moments make me happy. As do reviews.

ps. Road Trip has been updated, but the technical glitches FFN was going through still ensue because the "Last Updated" date has not changed. So. mosey on over to my profile if you are interested in reading the new chapter. =D I apologise on behalf of FFN for the inconvenience.