#tfwdamon

“What does this button do?” Pearl jabbed at a button so harshly that it popped off the car stereo, disappearing into an empty cigarette packet by the heel of her Dr. Martens. She leaned back in her seat as soon as Damon clenched his jaw, a cinnamon sweet smile stretching across her cheek bones. Riling him up was such a prolific pass time of Pearl’s that she was over the absolute moon to be trapped in a car with him, as per his request which almost made it all the better. Every time she whined and changed the music station, surfing channels at such a lightning speed that static rumbled through the radio, a frustrated exhale escaped his lips and Pearl’s cough syrup laughter filled the car. “You’re so moody,” she mused, winding down the passenger window until she could taste the crisp summer air. “You’re such–…” Struggling to find the right words to fill in the gnawing silence since Damon had decided it was best to ignore her while she was behaving like a brat, Pearl childishly tittered on, “an annoying little pissant. Sorry, was that copyrighted? Trademarked on? Tragically medieval insults, property of Damon Inc.” Each question bounced out of the open window unanswered until Pearl dragged her focus away from the shooting comets of oncoming traffic so she could fix him with a coy half-smile. “Want to know about a cool sex dream I had once?” Honeyed words barely roping him in, Damon raised his eyebrows and nodded once, making sure to keep his reaction so painfully casual that it entirely wiped the smirk from her face. “Starring Paul Potts. I have an opera kink, the more you know.” Pearl tucked up her knees so she could rest her converse on the dashboard while she feverishly lit up a cigarette. His muttered curses played out like music to her ears, even if it was about the traffic. “Did you ever watch that documentary about the boy who inhaled five cigarettes? He’s just walking around out there with five cigarette stubs in his lungs.” Pearl and her imaginary documentaries, she had just about a million of them, each one more wildly eccentric than the last. “All the kids called him stubby so he set himself on fire like one of those Tibetan monks.” Like a child who never really grew up because they didn’t get to, Pearl was so absorbed with the art of playing pretend that she’d forget when she was pretending. Rocking her muddy heels back and forth to the beat, a curling of grey left her lips as she gazed out the window, fascinated with the way tarmac blended into one kaleidoscopic blur. “I like spending time with you,” it rolled out so effortlessly that Pearl didn’t even blink but she didn’t dare shift her focus to study his reaction in case it’d burn the edges of the Polaroid snapshot. “Sometimes when I talk to people it’s like they’re looking at me through ten sheets of glass.” Not you though. The words danced along the length of her tongue until she drowned them out with another drag. “Driving Miss Winters,” she laughed through the subject change, turning her attentions back to the radio so she could turn up the volume. “No way! This song was blasting out when I was driven into a coma. Throwback.“ Even as she joked about it, something in her mood dipped, wrenching at her insides until she sank back into her seat and stared out of the window. “Sorry.” No idea why she was even apologising, Pearl watched the spinning of wheels as cars slowly passed them, imagining the way her brain would look if it was thrown into the spokes of them. A gooey hot mess splattered against the tarmac like lumps of soft scoop thrown into a blender. Every vile image proved little distraction, Pearl’s imagination burning from over use. Radio abruptly switched off, she met Damon’s gaze with her mouth open ready to argue but the tug of her hand to his lips so he could brush a soft kiss against her skin, made her eat the words back up. “You don’t need to do that whole pretending bullshit with me.” A frown laced her eyebrows together, but still she studied the way his composure softened as the words drifted out, “I do know you.” Then there it was. Humming to herself, Pearl returned to gazing out of the window, breeze cooling the blazing heat of her cheeks as she tried to play it down. As if butterfly wings weren’t beating so furiously she half expected insects to rip right out of her abdomen, as if that wasn’t a thought so morbidly alluring that she wanted to share it with him because unlike Reid, he’d actually appreciate it. Appreciate her. Realising that she’d left him hanging without an answer, Pearl parted her lips, only to seal them again without a word. “You know me,” she repeated it to herself, fingers dancing along the edges of the window, an effort to keep them from finding his because they were already crossing too many invisible lines. Lines that were there for a reason, to trip her up before she got hurt again. “You didn’t know about the Paul Potts fantasy so you can’t know me that well, pissant.” At the mere mention of Paul, the radio went back on, painting her lips with a hint of an amused smile.

oh BOY u are gonna regret this, fasten ur seatbelt we’re in 4 a bumpy ride