my silly words

yummy socioeconomic tensions

"Of course money can buy everything." He sits next to me on the steps, quiet, vast, warm presence, and I watch his cigarette smoke drift away on the glacial December breeze. I wait for him to continue, and like he always does, Henry takes his time. "As long as you boil it down long enough. Bald-faced financial bribery, I suppose, is what most people think of. But voyages. Material goods." He took a long, deep draft from the cigarette again. "Security. Funds give way to every nice thing in life."

"That's not true," I whisper, instinctively, and feel his cool grey gaze on the side of my face.

"Not fair, perhaps," he acquiesces, and shifts forward when the wind picks up again. Shielding us from it with his back. "But what is fair? What beauty is there in justice?"

I look up at him, inches between us, my eyes flicking between his own. He is too intense, now. It's like locking eyes with a stranger. "I don't think we'll ever understand each other."

He smiles at that. I'm drawn to the minute chip in his front tooth. "No. I don't think we will."

"How sad."

"Katholou," he murmurs, the intonations of what I recognize as Greek harsh on his tongue. "Not at all."

We go quiet. Of course Henry doesn't need to understand me, I'm reflecting. Henry understands everything already. Perhaps I offer him reprieve. In the distance, a church bell rings, luminous, low, and solemn, startling a pair of ravens out of their skeletal tree. It will begin to snow soon; I can smell it on the air.

"It would be tragic if you spent your whole life shunning beautiful things," he says presently, twisting the cigarette to ash on the frozen cobblestones. "The way you see the world is of great interest to me. You deserve to see more of it."

"Henry," breaks loose from my chest before I can halt it at the gate. The want inside of me— the seaside dreams, the sailboats, the terra cotta mission chapels— are strong, maybe stronger than I can contain. Would it be such a bad thing to prove Henry right— that money could really achieve anything? I would not be the first. Nor could I ever be the last.

"Yes?" he replies, eyes dark and liquid, infinitely patient.

"I—" I'm confused again, all my arguments, well-structured points wilting under daydream and his sheer force of presence, until finally I get the words out, the ones that feel right. "I want to go with you."

He turns to me, and smiles, broad, satisfied, looking like a feudal king in his fur coat. To deny him, I'm thinking, dizzily, goes against nature itself.

"There you go." He reaches out, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, the brush of rough fingertips leaving the skin of my cheek tingling. "Was it so hard?"

"Yes," I lie, a bit breathless. In truth, the only thing that was hard about it was swallowing my pride enough to admit how easy it was.

"Then it's a good thing you're so very capable."

--

awkward.............. guess what this is fan fiction of. U will not guess it