“Sounds like bullets peppering the ceiling,” she mentioned to the stranger beside her.
She’d been sitting by herself on the metro , looking out through the veil of the rain’s tearstains on the windowpane. Somewhere between Faliro and Thissio, a young man had slipped into the spot beside her. She didn’t flatter herself that he’d chosen to sit there, enchanted. The rest of the seats were full already. Nobody cared to sit next to an ex-virtuoso, an ex-model, a thin little nothing whose name had flared and faded like a lone firework, whose fingers had shriveled after the fire accident and could never breathe life into her cello again. She hid her face like she did her hands, hid her hands like she did her heart, crossing her legs and glaring out the window.
Until he’d come.
“That’s not exactly the sound of bullets,” he said.
She turned her head away from him then and continued to stare out the window, wondering if the glass could break with the intensity of her humiliated glare. She’d been trying to start a conversation for a while, and when she had, at last—shot down, sister.
“Hasn’t rained like this in a long time. Not since I’ve been in the city, at least.”
She blinked as she realized he was addressing her. Her green eyes turned to meet his, narrow and brown and tired. “It is pretty unusual for the season,” she agreed. He didn’t look much older than her, his face weather-worn and fuzzed with the hint of a black beard. The look suited him. She thought about how long it had been since she’d felt a man’s scruff against her fingers, her skin, and her heart froze in its fluttering. He looked away, as if alarmed by her bright hungry eyes, her windblown rich brown hair. She felt herself blush. Monastiraki and Omonia flew by outside the window, blurs of rain-bleached cement, traffic, and streetlamp-lit squares.
“Wouldn’t wanna be caught outside on a night like this.”
Her eyes glanced back at him again, watched him watching her. She drank in the tattered clothes, the gaunt jaw, noticed the soldier’s cap poking out of his bag and the dog-tag hanging on a chain around his exposed neck. He glanced out at the rain as if it was his worst enemy. And perhaps it was. Who was she to judge, she who would find a roof over her head once she disembarked?
“It would be awful,” she replied. Agio Nikolaos blew by. “Especially alone.”
She rummaged in her purse to hide her hands. Her twisted fingers closed around the metallic chill of her keys. “Next stop is mine.” Her eyes rose to meet his, and the two pairs of strangers’ eyes warmed with a deep and almost formal understanding.
“Mine as well,” he said. Might as well. He peered behind her outside the window to see the signpost: Kato Patissia. As good a stop as any.
"Angreek87"
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