[Transparency] Philosophy│K+│Katie/Cole
Title: Philosophy
Author: Winter Ashby (rosweldrmr)
Disclaimer: Transparency ©
spiritualenergy // This was written and posted with full disclosure and consent from SE.
Rating: K+
Summary: Katie and Cole talk about God.(Katie & Cole) Slight mentions of Rhonda & Katie if you squint.
Authors Notes: OBVIOUSLY, you have to read SE's fic before you read this one, otherwise it will make no sense.) But I strongly encourage all of you to read it. As you can see, not only did I like it - I fangirled it enough to write a fic of her characters. So, please enjoy! And SE, you know I love you and your writing. But these characters are eating my soul. They want fics, and I' weak so I gave in. How does it feel to have a fanfic of your own characters?It was getting easier, sometimes.
Sometimes, Katie almost forgot that she was… different, that she was something other than the rest of the world. And the flickers between the outsides and insides of people were happening less.
She started her sophomore year with a new goal. She would pretend to be normal. If she acted like she didn’t notice, didn’t see the muscle and bone, sinew and veins all wrapped up and intertwined, then it would be like it wasn’t there at all.
She started the year with a friend, more so. Rhonda, who knew what she was but still didn’t turn away. She didn’t ask questions, why and when? She didn’t bother asking the obvious, how. Instead she seemed to be content, satisfied at least, to just accept that Katie was as she had always been.
They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t speak of their conversation in the bathroom or what it meant to be connected by a secret. They talked, intermittently, about Katie’s parents.
“Are they talking?” Rhonda would ask, hopeful.
“No.” Katie answered, like she always did.
“Give it time.” Rhonda would smile the way only she could and Katie would nod while she ate her apple.
Seeds and flesh, core and red skin. It was getting easier to not look; to pretend that she didn’t see it.
She ate in silence.
But as she rolled the seed over her tongue, finally able to forget what it looked like past the thin membrane and into the white, bitter insides of it she considered that she wasn’t just passing for a teenage girl. She was a teenage girl.
Full of the same things, the same bits and pieces that made up all teenage girls. Heart and hair. Skin and clothes. She looked at Rhonda, ever the understated. She was beautiful, in a way that most girls weren’t. Her eyes had a strange glow that showed when smiled that smile that only she could. Her hair was tangled, always. Knotted up, twisted into a smashed bun, bound with a pen whose cap was lost long ago. Her freckles were light, scattered across her cheeks and nose.
That night, when Katie was home, she stood in front of a mirror and examined herself. Same bones and muscle. Same ribcage and heart. Same lungs and liver, same shoulder blades and joints. She turned slightly to the rights, as if angle would make a difference She should have been the same. But she wasn’t. On the outside, on the surface of her skin (which had always been hard for her to see herself) was pale. She had few freckles, and no glow in her plain brown eyes.
Not like Rhonda.
It was then that she considered that even with the extra bits she could see, she was still missing something very important. It was the parts of people that not even x-rays or MRI’s could see that made that different, made them what they were.
The heart was an organ. With two atriums, two ventricles, arteries and capillaries. Tissue and cell walls. It was just an organ, wasn’t it? Was there really a secret heart, something that she couldn’t see, a part of people that wasn’t in biology textbooks or anatomy videos. Was there something called a soul? And if there was, was it that that made her different? Was it God that made her see more than she should?
Katie went to sleep that night pondering these curiosities.
“Do you believe in God?” She asked Cole the next day, behind one of the trailers at school.
“What?” He looked up at her, cheekbone and veins, dark eyelashes, optic nerves. Katie looked away.
“God, you know…” she pointed up, “what do you think?”
He puzzled at her for a while, his tongue moving around the cylinder of the cigarette in his mouth. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
Katie shrugged. “I don’t know either. I was just thinking about what made us different.”
Cole chuckled. It was low and dry, but full. It was a nice noise. “Well, I’m a boy and you’re a girl. Don’t tell me you need a demonstration.”
Katie’s cheeks felt hot. She didn’t mean to, but she glanced anyway. No, she didn’t need a demonstration. “I meant, what makes people different.”
He stood, throwing the cigarette to the grass as he did. Katie hated the smell. He turned to face her and she pushed off from the side of the temporary classroom, ready to hear whatever he had to say. She could see his heartbeat quicken.
“We have the same structure. Same arms,” she reached out, not even noticing, and lightly touched the bare skin of his forearm. It was an academic thing, a demonstration of the epidermis, muscle, bone. His eyes flashed down at her. She could see the way his pulse picked up. “Same legs, same… fingers and toes. Same heart.” She moved her fingers to graze his chest.
She was whispering.
Cole leaned in. She could see him swallow and move his tongue along the back of his teeth. “But we’re different.” his voice was quiet too.
“Is that God?” Katie asked; mesmerized with the way Cole’s blood was moving in his veins and arteries.
“Maybe.” He answered, his heart picking up even more speed.
Even without looking past his skin, Katie could now see the pulse in his neck quicken. It was a strange reaction. Katie, so drawn to the shift in his body, extended a hand to touch his neck. “Are you alright?” she asked. Her mouth felt dry.
“Fine.” He answered as his hand touched the side of her face. “You know, you’re not like other girls.” His hand was cold. Not enough blood flow to his extremities.
She wanted to draw back. She felt like she was waking from a dream where everything was hazy, and her head felt disproportionately large. Maybe he could tell. Maybe he could see that she was different. She made a move, something like a sideways head tilt to remove his hand from her face.
But before she could turn away, his lips bent down to hers. She closed her eyes, instinctively. She never liked being too close to someone else’s insides. But that only made her more confused. Because the instant she shut her eyes, she was swept up in him.
How soft his lips were. The feeling of him breathing through his nose onto her upper lip. The taste of cigarette in his mouth, his hand moving from her face to her neck to her hair. She wrapped her arm around his neck and let her head fall back.
The kiss lasted 6.7 seconds. And when it was over, Katie smiled and thanked him. It wasn’t like the movies. It wasn’t mind blowing, or perfect. It was sloppy and wet. His saliva was on her lips and she didn’t wipe it away.
She left him by the side of the trailer and went back to lunch with Rhonda.
“I kissed Cole.” She told her as she bit into her sandwich.
“Oh?” Rhonda asked, fully unsurprised. “Why?”
Katie shrugged. “To see if God exists.”
“And how did that go?” Rhonda asked, distracted as she tried to pierce her juice pouch with a plastic straw.
“Pretty good, I think.” Katie reminisced, replayed the goose-bumps that prickled the skin of her arms and legs when she imagined the kiss again.
That night she stood in front of the mirror again and examined herself more closely. She wasn’t normal. And not just because she could see her own kidneys, or check for cavities. She didn’t need to pretend to be normal. She would just be. And see what came of that.