Rain, bare, peach, clock, knuckles (Karen/Frank)
Rain
Getting caught in the rain is for lovers, not a man on the run and a woman who won’t stop pestering him about his nasty penchant for killing anyone who looks at him sideways.
It happens when Karen’s yelling at him - the clouds opening up mid-sentence - nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide from the deluge of freezing water.
Instantly her hair is plastered to her skin, and she’s cold, the chattering of her teeth seriously undermining what it is she has to say.
Frank’s as still as a statue, standing there with the water cascading off of him in cold rivulets, immovable as always.
Angry, she moves past him, refusing to take a look to see if he’s following her home.
Bare
Her apartment door slams behind her, and still she doesn’t check to see if the dark figure of her brooding companion has followed.
She’s cold, her blouse soaked through lands in the floor with a wet slap and her toes squish in her ruined flats so she kicks them off a little more forcefully than necessary.
She ignores the quick tattoo on her door, instead sliding her skirt off and hanging it on the back of a chair, knowing damn well that it’s Frank and that he’ll wait as long as she makes him.
That’s another thing that pisses her off, the fact that he never knocks twice, that he just fucking knows she’ll eventually open the door for him, that she’s so predictable, that he’s so constantly unruffled.
Spinning on her heel, she stomps over to the door and yanks it open, her bare skin chilly, a whisper of goosebumps racing across her body as the air whooshes past her limbs.
Peach
Frank may seem unaffected by the willowy blonde in front of him, her long legs bare, the high-cut lace panties accentuating the curve of her hip.
And perhaps she doesn’t notice the way his nostrils flare, eyes darting from one point of interest to another: her glowing eyes, the dip of her waist, one creamy shoulder, then the other, the nearly transparent lace cups covering dusky peach nipples.
It only takes a few seconds for the image of a half-naked Karen Page to become permanently imprinted in his memory, Frank barely twitching even though his nerve endings are on fire, and this seems to irritate her, because she abruptly turns away.
He watches her leave - the small of her back, two little dimples at the base of her spine - his eyes scanning at leisure as he closes the door behind him
She disappears into her bathroom only to return seconds later, throwing a towel at him, gruffly saying, “Dry off before you catch a cold or something.”
Clock
They sit at her little kitchen table in silence, listening to the seconds go by with the ticking of the clock on the wall.
The coffee in their mugs is hot, and Karen is now clad in a fluffy bathrobe and Frank is sitting across from her in nothing but a towel, his clothes drying over the radiator.
It’s kind of like a staring contest, only Frank blinks whenever he wants, and Karen is having a hard time maintaining the intensity of her gaze with such a fucking distraction sitting in front of her.
Frank is covered in scars, thin white lines that have long since healed, deeper red welts that are fresher, even a gash over his shoulder that appears to be bleeding still, and yet Karen can’t stop thinking about what it might be like to run her lips over those marks.
Suddenly the ticking of the clock is maddening, and she can’t take the silence any longer, blurting out, “I should have punched you when I had the chance. Maybe you wouldn’t have put a bullet in the only lead I’ve had in weeks.”
Knuckles
Her comment prompts Frank to rise from his chair, coming around the table to stand perilously close to Karen, the fluffy towel hanging indecently low on his hips.
“Come on,” he says, hand at her elbow pulling her up out of the chair, “You ever punch someone in the face? Hurts like hell if you don’t do it right.”
He doesn’t let her go, instead sliding his grip from her elbow down to her wrist, pushing back the loose sleeve of her robe, continuing, “When you make a fist, fold your thumb across your second and third knuckle.”
He’s too close, and Karen thinks, almost hysterically, that this feels like some kind of twisted foreplay, all the heat in her body rushing through her and settling in the pit of her stomach as he drags his thumb over her knuckles.
He’s standing in front of her now, letting go of her arm and reaching for her face, he catches her chin, tipping her face up to his, “And make sure you keep your chin down when you throw a haymaker, Page. You can knock a man out cold, I’m sure.”