Chapter Text
The lights are just streaming in through the windows, pale pink and cream and butter yellow, like a sorbet, like the sno-cones you would eat with Daniel and Vanessa, her lavender cherry and his blueberry mint, and your pink lemonade. He’s smiling at you from across the table, and you can’t tell if there are bags under his eyes, or heavy makeup. His hair is still all rumpled, and he isn’t dressed up, just a simple black dress, his boots, a heavy green coat he’d pulled on out the door, insisting it was cold. You’re both eating breakfast at a warm little diner, on the edge of town, half hanging into the open desert, forlorn sign waving overhead. Brite-Stop Morning And Diner! It proclaims, faded letters worn by desert winds. He smiles at you, over your plate of meat and orange slices and writhing centipedes, smiles at you over his own of coffee and pomegranate seeds and Huevos Rancheros. He smiles at you, and everything about him is lovely.
~
The lights are warm through the white linen drapes, hot to scorching in person. The Smiling God’s love is beautiful and glorious, and all the town is bustling about outside, like busy, buzzing bees, stopping occasionally to giggle and bumble with one-another. You’re eating lunch in a quaint little place, a pretty, white building, that always smells like floral potpourri. You and Charles both have parasols hanging from the hat rack at the door, yours yellow and his black, leaning against eachother. He’s grinning like a giddy fool, kicking at your feet playfully under the table, his heavy skirts swishing around his legs. You giggle and kick back, to his delight. He smiles at you, over your plate of picnic sandwiches and apple slices and pink lemonade, smiles at you over his own of darkly-fruity brandy and a tropa belladonna and lamb chops. He smiles at you, and everything about him is lovely.
~
The lights are dim, now, a warm desert sunset settling in, the hush-hush of purple glow to your west, stars creeping-crawling through cracks in the writhing void on spider’s legs. A home-ness to the fading eastern golden glow, the gentle sweet melancholy of the sun tucking in for the night, wrapped in his own fires for protection against the bone-chilling cold to come. Charles is smiling at you again, from across the table. You’re in a rented gazebo, in the Spire Gardens, the loveliest part of the Prosperous Prophet’s Park. It’s a pure, sun-blessed white, with curls of flowering vines and ivy winding up it’s sides. There are glowing candles on the table between you, smelling of jasmine and flickering like their own miniature suns. It’s a serene, somber, romantic mood, the airs of vastness and lust and quiet, quiet beauty, the burbling of the Divine Springs behind you, the fairy lights blinking in and out above. It feels peaceful and quiet and lovely.
Charles smiles at you, over your champagne and human flesh and honeycomb, smiles at you over his own of heavy whiskey and dark steak and foxglove flower. He smiles at you, and everything about him is perfect.