a sound for everything

They had been walking up the beach for an hour by now, and by now the fog had settled into a more transparent mist around the horizon's edge, leaving the nearly cloudless summer sky as blue as daydreams; the sun's rays were white, but not white-hot, and the exciting gale that had whipped their hair about the day before now merely tossed it; it teased the tendrils of her multi-faceted hair, he noticed, playing with it in a lover's manner, curling the untrimmed edges around its fingers...running its hands through the length of it...pushing it back gently, yet ever so purposefully, from her face...

...her face, tired and painfully beautiful to him in the gray light of yesterday's overcast skies, now wiped clean, made of porcelain, the sun's light bouncing off of the skin, giving its former pallor an almost blinding radiance...and still she was tired, and still she was uncomfortable, too awkward, too scared to talk about they had both said the night before. Eyes kept downward, watching her own steps, careful to not step on another bit of flotsam, another dead sea creature washed up on the dull brown shore; earbuds shoved in. Her and her goddamn playlists, he thought.

Suddenly he looked ahead, realizing he'd been looking back at her, because of course he was at least three strides ahead (although he hadn't wanted to walk alone). Suddenly he stopped. Suddenly he turned to her.

"What are you listening to?"

She halted mid-step, her reverie interrupted--and yet as though she was anticipating (perhaps, dreading?) his voice at some point in the day. She gingerly pulled the earbuds from her ears. "What?"

"What song were you listening to? What list?"

She reached into the pocket of her rainjacket to retrieve her iPod, but knew the answer without even looking at it. "'Daydream.' By Tycho."

He raised his eyebrows slightly and nodded.

The left corner of her mouth was raised slightly. "It's on the 'Ocean' list." She pulled out the iPod and paused it, before wrapping the headphone cord around it and placing it carefully into her jacket pocket again.

He smirked in reply. "You even have a playlist for the ocean?"

She tilted her head the slightest bit to the right. Treading carefully; almost bypassed the eggshells on the kitchen floor. "Of course." The unspoken taunt of "Don't you know me by now?" floated in the air between them, and he realized she was still afraid to anger either of them.

She turned her head towards the ocean itself, relentlessly reaching for the shore. Her warm eyes narrowed in the sunlight. His eyes followed the curve of her jawline again, the line down her neck--again. "I get in a certain mood around the ocean. There are certain sounds, certain instrumental sounds--and atmospheres--that I somehow only associate with the atmosphere I feel on the beach."

The grimace she'd been wearing as she squinted at the sun turned into a smile as she turned her head to face him again. His expression was one of contemplation, and she must have thought he looked serious, because the smile faded. She pursed her lips and fixed her gaze on the sand in front of her again as she made to continue around him.

He let her pass him and walk a few more steps before he started with, "Have you ever tried--"

She turned back to him--not suddenly, not sharply, and not completely facing him; she wasn't expecting anything great or terrible out of his mouth--a leisurely pace. She was facing away from the ocean, and the breeze caught one tendril of her hair and it flew across her face, splitting it in half. She reached up and pushed it behind her ear as she looked at him--continue, please. There was tiredness there, but there was sincerity, too.

"Have you ever tried not listening to music?"

Her eyebrows lowered. "Not listening to music? You mean, not ever? Nothing?"

He nodded, his mouth still slightly open. He licked the salty air off his lips. He must look stupid.

There was that sad, apologetic smile again. "Well, I've tried." She turned a little more towards him. "But I think I've listened to too much to ever get any out of my head. There's always a song in my head." She looked towards the humble cliffside before switching her gaze back to him again. "I guess my mind can't shut it off."

He didn't even take a deep breath first. His first two steps were more like a stumble forward, then he moved steadily until he reached her. She had turned to face him now, so that their bodies were perpendicular to each other. She furrowed her brow in confusion, although he could see her jaw tense slightly, as if she was preparing to deflect what she thought she knew was coming. God, please don't defend yourself, not now. Her brown eyes sparkled--the gold flecks must be catching the light--and widened, and her mouth opened slightly as she tried to sound a protest.

"Try," was all he could get out before he lowered his head to hers and kissed her.

Her eyes were still open for the first few seconds, in surprise, before she actually shut them and gave in.

It was a full kiss. It was full of anticipation, longing, hunger, and yet it was unassuming and gentle. She got lost in it the way you'd get lost in a thick blanket, in a good song, at sea--all at once. The volume of the world seemed to be turned up, and she could hear the breaking of the tide, the sighing of the wind, the occasional cry of a gull. Every feeling was magnified: the sudden touch of his hand that had slowly been reaching to take hers, the warmth in her throat and around her ears, her feet slowly sinking into the sand, the pull of her center towards him. The salty smell of the ocean air that she'd smelled before was almost masked by the weirdly comforting scent of the skin on his face as she literally breathed him in.

And that was it.

There was no song she could find later to perfectly fit this moment.