Let Me Go Into The Stars

I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy.

The boy winced from the sting as he put the lit cigarette to his lips. He readjusted it to the other side, for on the other a reddish bruise bloomed there, smeared like dried blood-red jam. It matched the lilac orchard that blossomed on his cheek bone, the spring confetti fading on the winter of his complexion. A darker shade lingered beneath his left eye, the only garish blemish on that side, as if he truly slept with one eye opened.

Folds of smoke drifted like ribbons between grazed knuckles, peeling skin, and calculative, cold steel blue eyes the colour of storms studied Clara Marples as she studied him in turn.
Clever, she thought prominently. He is ever so clever, but a serene and stern expression was not nonchalance, but a mask.
A journal sat balanced on her thigh that she scribbled into from time to time, although the main keystones remained stored in her mind for safekeeping, and due to the observation that the boy kept trying to read upside-down. She picked off fluff on her tartan skirt and black tights as a gramophone wailed quietly in the background; a struggling death.

Formality was required in her line of work, but not in her job. She did not have the need to make use of it. She had other unusual means of professionalism in prying the mind and extracting knowledge that worked magnificently to her advantage, and pacified her preference of informalities. 
She lit her own cigarette; the second of the day. The boy remained quiet as he carefully watched her, as still as an effigy. He read as she read, surveying one another. Far below in the bowels of the city, the foggy London morning begun with its rambunctious atmosphere thieved from circuses, carnivals and zoos. Steam hissed like a pit of snakes, taxi horns screeched vehemently like elephant trunks and a choir of civilians bellowed like primates, muffled against the thick glass but slipping in sneakily through the crack of one single open window that trafficked out the scent of smoke that her vanilla and cinnamon candles battled.

‘Are you absolutely positive that you are the correct individual for the job, Miss Marples?’ He finally broke and spoke. ‘I shan’t make it easy for you.’
He had a set smirk styled on his enviable ruby lips consistently. Clara placed her teal painted fingers beneath her chin and crossed her legs. Publically, she smiled amused, privately she marvelled at those bright and cold eyes that made her picture winter in Hyde Park, blades of steel, country lakes and the chilly afternoon blue skies she’d wandered beneath after school that frothed with storms.
‘Need I remind you Nathaniel, that it was you who sought me out?’ She responded casually as mustered.  

‘Only by venerated recommendation. Word of mouth heralded you rather famously and positioned you as the perfect professional for the job. If - of course - considering the job is fixable. If not to be the situation, then at least you are the most qualified individual up for the challenge.’ He rubbed the sides of the soft sofa and his shabby leather jacket squelched. He seemed to her a woeful boy of bookish origins still keen to shed his wealthy intellectual and well educated background for the gutters once he discovered a charming; yet almost weedy, attracting qualities stared back at him in the mirror years bygone. Something seedy and sordid lingered in his nature, in his clothing, in his scars, behind his eyes. The boy and his books had been brutally killed long ago by intoxicating substances such as alcohol, drugs and lust and only the ghost remained.

He was glancing at her achievements aligned, framed and pinned to the wall behind her desk above the lit fireplace. ‘Yet I come here to discover a girl more so than a woman, who I can’t even say has trekked a decade ahead of me. What are you, twenty-five or twenty-six? Not much older than I, and I do not speak ill of your overshadowing me with your achievements or qualifications, but only based solely on your ability due to the form that it is being presented in.’
Clare smiled and leaned forward, intrigued. ‘Is that bothersome to you? Considering all of what you see and hear of me in hearsay, does my youth hinder you or my gender?’