33. Daisy/Frank, 4, for @dwyn5002
Character learns something new about their date.
Frank was surprised by how talkative Daisy was once she’d got over her nervousness. Once they’d both admitted how attracted they were to each other. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, off her bright, sparkling eyes, the animation in her features as she talked. Her slender hands moved gracefully, gesturing to emphasize her points. He could barely keep his attention on what she was saying, too busy watching her move.
“You are so damn beautiful,” he said suddenly when she paused to drink her coffee. “What are you doing with a beat-up old wreck like me?”
“Is that what you were busy thinking about, when you were so quiet?” she set her cup down, smiled at him.
“Pretty much, yeah,” he shrugged sheepishly.
“Well, I won’t deny the beaten-up part of your self-critique,” she reached up, traced gentle fingers over the break in his beaky nose, a not-completely-healed cut under his left eye. “You really need to keep your face out of the way of the bad guy’s fists.”
He didn’t say anything. ‘You should see the other guy’ would have been completely redundant, being as there had been six other guys and they were all dead. A fact which Daisy knew well, having seen him in action the night before.
“However, you are neither old, nor a wreck,” Daisy continued when he was silent. Her fingers continued their gentle movement across his face, tracing his granite-hard features, the chiselled cheekbones. Frank closed his eyes, savouring the softness of her skin against his, like butterfly wings as they danced over his eyelids, stroked down his nose and paused, her fingertip against his upper lip.
“I’m thinkin’ that you’re looking at me through rose-tinted lenses,” Frank muttered hoarsely when she said nothing more. Opening his eyes to look at her again, he found her smiling wryly.
“I don’t do that any more. Things tend to look a lot uglier when those lenses crack.”
He cocked his head curiously, and Daisy sighed. “I told you I was an orphan, right?”
“Yeah, Matt said you and he met at St. Agnes.”
“Yeah, but it turned out I actually did have parents. I didn’t meet my father under the best of circumstances and I misjudged him badly… and then when I met my mother I kind of went too far in the opposite direction.”
Frank watched her quietly as she spoke, opened his hand in a silent gesture inviting her to continue. Daisy sighed.
“I got all night.” Frank gestured to the waitress. “Some more coffee over here, please, hon? You could just leave that jug, if you like…”
