Work Text:
Tatum wouldn’t tell anyone this, but she smells – smelled – like Windsong. She didn’t seem to be the sort of girl who would wear drugstore perfume, but she smelled of it – like daisies. Like the sun.
Sidney can pick it out in a crowd – smells it every day of her life, no matter where she is. It’s like being sucked back in time to a place where she was young and didn’t know fear. It’s like the memory of your first kiss, lingering like bubblegum on your tongue, or the sound of a sharp shock of laughter from a bright, red-painted young mouth.
Tatum had always been Sidney’s first crush – had always been the cooler girl who was badass, who was fearless – who lived on her own terms and with her own brains and smarts at the forefront. She hadn’t silenced herself for Stu (which is probably why Stu chose to kill her). Sidney was her own woman right from the start, but Tatum was the person she patterned herself on, attitude-wise. Her mother had been loving, but just preoccupied enough to make room for Tatum’s advice, Tatum’s support, Tatum’s courage in Sid’s life. Tatum was the one who taught her about makeup, how to paint her face up and wear it without fear. Sidney remembered crowding around the bathroom mirror at school, looking deep into it as Tatum painted her face up.
Sid would think about kissing her.
Not that Sidney had had the courage to actually kiss her. But oh, in hindsight, in retrospect, she wanted that kiss, needed that touch. Wanted to know what Tatum would say if they met again at twenty, at thirty, and could feel and see each other. They would do more than kiss.
Instead, Sid smells her on the wind. Sees a flash of fashionable clothing, a glimmer of bright hair, is taken aback, howls at her choices, and gets on with living.
Tatum would want it that way.