Work Text:
Mary trudges her way into the space bustling with the crowd of rush hour. Like the thousands surrounding her, she’s just gotten off work. She tugs her wallet out of her pocket for her card, beeping it on the barrier gate so it allows her through. Her face contorts into a tired frown when faceless strangers bump into her as if she were invisible, annoyed but lacking the energy to do anything about it. Instead, her legs seek relief from walking when she finally gets on the escalator, allowing her a moment to simply stand still as she ascends.
The blonde minds not for the people in front of and behind her, infiltrating her senses; her hearing with their voices, her smell with the concoction of their perfumes, her sight with their appearances. She’s simply too exhausted to pay much attention to any of it, just conscious enough to step off the escalator when it reaches the top.
CAUTION
Mary blinks at the floor and listens, minding the yellow line. Her vision is bleary, eyes burning to close and stay closed for the next twelve hours. The weight of her bag seems like more than it had been just a few minutes ago, feet aching in her shoes. She blinks again, this time studying the shoes of the strangers standing closest to her to stay awake.
Black, glossy Oxfords. A businessman, perhaps.
Cream coloured high heels. Someone elegant.
Classic, high topped Converse. One shoe’s laces are undone. Must be a high school kid.
Mary’s own shoes; a well-worn pair of working boots, still laced up even after such a long day. The material is fraying in some places, and the toe caps are scuffed. Despite their deteriorating appearance, they only seem to get more comfortable with each wear.
A train approaches.
From the sound alone, Mary knows it’s coming from the left; it’s stopping for the platform across from hers. The speed of the train creates a tunnel of wind that passes through the station. The air is cold and crisp, and Mary would like it more if it didn’t tussle her hair. She looks up to shake her fringe out of her face.
Her breath catches in her throat.
Her heart starts racing- why does it start racing like that?
Standing on the other platform is a lithe figure dressed in white, a woman. Her hair is long and impossibly straight, even with the breeze blowing it to one side. It’s silken almost, and white as snow. Everything about her spells pristine, painted in the planes of her sculpted face, and the smoothness of her skin even from such a distance, and the very way she stands.
The world around them seems to slow, from the intercom relaying the arrival of the train, to the train itself. The stranger’s hair flows out behind her in slow motion, too. If Mary looked hard enough, she could probably see each individual strand.
Except she doesn’t, because she’s frozen in place by eyes the colour of a sea at noon, shimmering like crystals as they look right into hers- right into her mind, and her heart. Mary feels stripped bare by eyes like none other.
Her heart races against the speed of the train.
She’s light-headed, but wide awake now.
This woman, this absolute stranger, she’s…
She is the most beautiful woman Mary has ever seen.
She is the most beautiful woman Mary will ever see, and she’s sure of it.
The stranger’s lips, a pale, glossy pink, curve up into the smallest of smiles. Somehow, she manages to make it private, manages to make it so it’s only Mary’s. The blonde knows it in the way it’s gone as soon as it had appeared, as if she had been the only one meant to catch it in it’s ephemeral perfection. Mary feels warm, in a way she’s never felt before.
The closer the train comes to a stop, the more of it obscures the stranger from Mary’s view. She cranes her neck, even tries moving further to the side to see the last of her that she can. Alas, the massive vehicle inevitably blocks the entirety of the platform across from her.
Mary feels her heart hollow out with an overwhelming emptiness.
She hadn’t realised until now that it had been filled to the brim, in the seven seconds she had been locking eyes with the stranger.
White noise fills Mary’s ears as she watches through the dimmed windows of the train, people filing into each carriage. The sounds that warn of the doors closing is distant, as if not coming from the speakers right above her head.
The train departs.
And just like that, the stranger is gone.
She’s gone.
The blonde boards her train with dead eyes when it arrives, unknowing of how much they had shined, warm and golden, for the stranger.
Mary zones out to the remnants of warmth the angelic presence had blessed her with, and the dull ache of knowing she might never see her again.