The wind picks up and you know it’s only a matter of time. You’d set the flame on low, watched it simmer and reflect in her eyes for weeks before deciding tonight to turn up the heat. The fire had gotten out of control and spread as fires sometimes do, and all you can think about right now is rain.
You can see the clouds in her eyes and she attempts to smile as Meredith wields a camera. You think you know the front’s moving in more because she’s disappointed and frustrated than doubting you, but just to be sure you wish the moisture would escape her eyes so you could more clearly see the curing green light behind it.
Tonight, though, the light’s been provided by vast streaks of reds and yellows and oranges. Funny how you thought those would be the bold colors of your future when now they represent what you think the end of days would look like painted hastily and with little dedication against the black backdrop of the northern sky. You watch her pose for one last picture and you know it’s only a matter of time.
She doesn’t look at you as you move towards your car. Each step is calculated with a strange combination of hesitance and defiance; you’ve navigated this parking lot before and you can’t be sure there aren’t more duplicitous mines lying in wait, waiting to taint the asphalt with fabulous explosions that dazzle but eventually burn away. She doesn’t look at you but she’s beside you and you think of rain.
Her hand slips into yours and you squeeze her fingers gratefully. You’ve both been burned in the past and you realize now that it was wrong to start your future with the same colors that still scrape at your past. You should have themed the night in greens and blues, greys and deep teals. Soothing colors, calming images that represent what she is to you. Because while the passion you have for her, that she has for you, is nothing short of intoxicating, it’s nonetheless based in the solid blue of your bed sheets, the soft green of her eyes, the reassuring grey you pilot together, always together.
You stop short of the car and turn to look back towards the building and over the space you’ve traveled together. You almost expect to see plumes spiraling above the blacktop but you don’t and you think of the white wine you have chilling in the back seat of your car because she hates champagne. She twines her arms around your left one like a grapevine, and you think of rain. Of lush green ivy climbing up the side of a terrace in a house that you share, finally. You think of a bed that seems to belong in a rented room when she’s not in it, and you know it’s only a matter of time.
She kisses your shoulder and you wonder at the fact that you haven’t heard the deep, rich caress of her voice in almost an hour. You turn to her, pull your arm from her grasp as your hand find hers again and your fingers lock together.
“Soon,” you say and she says “I know.”
“But not here. Not anymore.”
She nods and now you think of the rich purple of her sheets. You think of the first time you saw them and how even then you’d known it was only a matter of time. You’d seen them and it had been a physical, tangible sign reassuring you that while she’d changed, she was still herself. You need that tonight, those sheets and that subtle reassurance. You’ve existed way too often lately in the yellow cowardice of being unable to stand up to your boss, and today in the red anger of finally telling your boss what you think of him, and just recently in the blinding orange determination of finally, really trying to ask your question. You feel charred, smoky with exhaustion, and you want to curl into the soothing blue of her heart.
The wind picks up and you turn together towards your car. It’s only a matter of time.
********
A week later and two days before she leaves for New York the sky opens like a fireman working a double shift. She’s soaked and you’re soaked and you love the way the rain seems to wash away the fancy exterior she’s decorated herself with to leave you with the simple vision of the woman you fell in love with half smiling at you. The smile falters as she sucks in a breath when you fall to your knees, both of them, because while you know you’re supposed to do this on one you can’t conjure the balance to keep up with tradition anymore. It figures, you think, as you’ve tried all the clichés before only to be thwarted by five o’clock or fiancés or ill-timed coworkers. The rain picks up as you slide the ring on her finger and the world is painted a delicious grey. The flames of the past, the yellows and reds and oranges of missed chances and stolen moments have faded, turned to ash, and you stand together atop the ruins. A new sort of light fanned by the fullness of the rainy afternoon reaches her eyes and now yours. The drops of moisture that cling to her lashes push into your heart to find the simmering coals of should-have-beens that still hiss and smoke unsettlingly and she quiets them.
She smiles and tells you she’s glad it was only a matter of time.
Story Notes:
I told myself I wasn't going to attempt a post-finale fic...and here I am. So sue me. To be honest I'm quite happy with the way things turned out on Thursday, but apparently there's part of me that just won't let this go...
Author's Chapter Notes:
Here we go. FYI, this was written while I listened to Death Cab's "Grapevine Fires" basically on repeat. You can see it motivated me.
Catie9 is the author of 7 other stories.
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