magic
magic - Quinn/Ned; G
The bell over the door tinkles with her arrival, making him look up, and then freeze in the process of rolling out dough.
For a brief moment, she seems to glow, and in that brief moment, he has a wild thought that she's somehow sunlight personified, but then the door closes behind her with another tinkle of the bell, and he realizes it's just her bright yellow dress combined with her long blonde hair.
Her smile is bright too as she starts towards the counter, and he swipes his hands on his apron as he steps from the kitchen.
"Hi," he says, returning her smile. "What can I do for you?"
"Honestly," she begins, and her expression turns hopeful. "I was kind of hoping you could give me a job."
His gaze flicks around the small restaurant, lighting on the sole patron sitting in a booth by the corner, quietly reading his newspaper, and then back to her.
Her expression is now slightly crestfallen, and she gives an almost imperceptible nod of her head.
"I guess if you're not busy enough to actually need help..." She trails off, and then hitches her smile up again, though he can see the disappointment, and almost desperation, in her eyes. "Worth a shot. Thanks anyway."
She turns to go, and he finally finds his voice. "I, um - wait!"
His voice is louder than he intends, and she whirls back around, one eyebrow arched.
He feels a flush warm his face, and clears his throat. "I could, um, maybe use some help. It's a little dead now -" He stumbles over his words momentarily, causing her to look at him curiously, and then gives a quick shake of his head. "But it usually picks up later on. After work, after dinner, that sort of thing. So I could probably use the help then. And I'm sure they'd like seeing you more than me."
She smiles at the veiled compliment, and he smiles back.
"So when do you want me to start?"
"Is now okay?"
She nods, her smile becoming broad. "Now's great. What do you want me to do?"
"Go check on him," he says, nodding to the man in the corner. "See if he needs anything."
She heads over to the table as he moves back towards the kitchen, and when he hears her cheerful voice, asking the man if he'd like some more coffee or another piece of pie, he can't stop the smile that curves his lips.
Maybe she really is made of sunlight.
He doesn't like to be touched.
It's something she notices almost immediately once she begins working at The Pie Hole, the way he always seems to keep a bit of distance between them, moving his hand away from hers when her fingers get too close to his.
Most of the time it seems like an unconscious effort on his part, like he's so used to it that his body does it for him without him needing to be aware of it.
Aside from that, though, he's a really nice guy, quiet but easy to talk to, and fun to work with, though he's really strict about not letting her see the new food shipments, or go back into the food storage area at all.
He tells her it's because there's just a lot of crates back there, and it can be dangerous sometimes, and he doesn't want her to hurt herself, but deep down she wonders if he's really telling her the truth.
It doesn't really matter, she supposes, since every morning when she comes in there are boxes and baskets full of almost unbelievably fresh fruit in the kitchen.
He gave her a strawberry her first full day, letting her pick the one she wanted out of the basket, and she had lifted her gaze to him, eyes wide, as she bit into the berry.
A moment later she laughed, raising a hand to catch the juice dripping down her chin, and he had grinned and gone to fetch a paper towel, not letting their fingers touch as he passed it to her.
"This is the best strawberry I've ever tasted," she said when she regained her composure and wiped the last of the juice from her chin. "Where do you get them?"
"Trade secret," he replied with a mysterious smile.
After about a week of working there, she's tried every pie flavor he makes, and still can't decide which one she likes best.
They sit together for lunch every day, either at the counter or at one of the booths, but when it comes to dessert, she's the only one who eats the pie, and she asks why he won't have some too.
"I don't eat my own pie," he murmurs, shrugging as he lifts his coffee cup. "I don't want to get sick of it."
He gives her a crooked smile, and she's pretty sure, once again, that he's lying.
The patrons seem to love her, and it's not hard to see why. She's definitely beautiful, lips always curved in a wide smile, her voice cheerful as she greets the customers, takes their orders, delivers their pie, and wishes them a good day.
He can never seem to take his eyes off of her, watching as she flits around the restaurant, the skirts of her pretty patterned dresses fluttering around her knees.
She really is like sunshine, he thinks, unable to deny how much brighter things seem to be now that she's here.
She's even helped him bring in more business, urging him to advertise more and not rely so much on word of mouth.
It helps that he uses pictures of her holding his pies in his advertisements, and it's always amusing when customers come in and recognize her, seemingly surprised that she's a real person who actually works there.
The more time that passes, he finds he's more and more excited to see her every day, and before long, he has to admit that he's developed an attraction to her.
It's not just her looks, but her laugh and her smile, all the different ways she wears her hair, the different colors and patterns of her dresses, the way she sings softly to herself sometimes when she's setting up the new displays on the counter or assembling her tray for delivery.
All of these things endear her to him, but they also make him sad, because no matter how attracted to her he may be - and oh how the nights when he lies awake in bed thinking about her seem to be increasing in frequency - he knows that there can be, and will be, nothing between them.
He leads a lonely life, full of secrets, and there's no way he can bring her into that.
Days turn into weeks, and before she knows it, a month has passed, and then two.
The number of secrets he seems to be keeping from her is greater than what she actually knows about him, but then she's not exactly rushing to divulge her entire life story to him either.
For the time being, it's okay. They still work together in harmony, and something tells her that he didn't smile or laugh nearly as much as he did before she came along.
She can't deny that she's attracted to him, and that her attraction grows stronger with every day and with every new little piece of information he chooses to entrust her with.
At the same time, though, his avoidance of physical contact is beginning to frustrate her.
There isn't even the occasional arm or hand brush, and more and more she just wants to feel his skin under her fingertips, to brace herself against his arm as she reaches around him for something, to lean against him when they sit together in one of the booths to eat their lunch, hold his hand, kiss his lips.
It's a question he won't answer, no matter how many different ways she asks him.
Early in December, she arrives to work early, having been unable to sleep, and thinking that she'd come in and maybe help him bake some of the pies.
She lets herself in the front door with her key, shrugging off her coat and hanging it and her scarf on the coat rack by the counter, and brushes snow from her hair as she starts back to the kitchen.
The top of the work table is clean and bare, ready for another day of baking pies, and she smiles a little when she hears noises from the back room.
She moves across the kitchen, thinking she'll ask if he needs any help, but the words die in her throat when she sees the boxes of dead fruit.
Her nose crinkles at the smell, not terribly strong due to the refrigerated room but still noticeable, and she swallows hard, trying to figure out what this means.
Movement catches her attention, and she looks up to see him with a box of dead strawberries. He plucks one out, and she watches, wide-eyed, as the berry grows plump and ripe in his fingers, the black, shriveled skin transforming back to its original rich red.
A gasp slips from her before she can stop it, and he looks up sharply, the berry falling from his fingers to the small table.
"Quinn -"
"What - what did you just do, what is all of this?"
His eyes flit around the boxes of dead fruit, and his expression is pained, his mouth open slightly as though trying to figure out what to say.
Finally he shrugs helplessly. "If you want to quit, I get it. Just please don't tell anybody."
She frowns and steps timidly into the room, giving a slight shake of her head.
"No, I don't want to quit, I just - explain it to me."
"What do I say?" he says, shrugging again. "I bring dead things back to life just by touching them?"
"That's a start," she murmurs, moving closer to him. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It's not something you just share," he says quietly, staring down at the table now. "I mean, it's not something normal people can do."
"It's extraordinary, though," she says, her voice still soft.
She stops beside him, and he shies away from her as he always does.
"Can - can I?" she asks, gesturing towards the strawberry.
He nods. "Yeah, it's perfectly fine. This is what goes into all of the pies."
She reaches a tentative hand forward and grabs the strawberry, lifting it to her mouth. It feels just like any other strawberry, smells like any other strawberry -
After a brief hesitation, she finally bites carefully into the berry; the flavor explodes on her tongue, and she lifts her other hand to catch a small dribble of juice as it drips down her chin.
"Tastes like any other strawberry," she whispers.
His lips curve in a hollow smile, and she lowers the berry, staring at it for a moment before looking up at him again.
"So why don't you eat your own pies?" she asks, sure she knows the answer, but wanting confirmation.
By way of an answer, he takes the berry from her; it instantly shrivels and blackens in his fingers, and he drops it to the table.
"Anything I bring back to life," he murmurs, rubbing his hand on his apron, "will die if I touch it again. It's perfect for pies, because it never goes bad, but if I eat it..."
He trails off, and she nods.
"And this is why I don't like touching people," he continues, pushing off the table and stepping around her, moving towards the kitchen.
"What do you mean?" she asks, following him.
"They feel like instruments of death," he says, turning to face her, his hands held up in front of him. "Who wants to touch me, who wants to be touched by me, after finding out what I can do?"
She lifts her hands to try to take his, and once again he moves away from her.
"Ned, please."
She steps close to him, and successfully grabs his hands, folding them between both of hers.
His mouth drops open in a quiet gasp, and she shakes her head.
"They're not instruments of death. Not at all. You create things, beautiful things. It's - it's magic."
She separates his hands, bringing one to press it flat to her chest, letting him feel her heartbeat, and lifts her other hand to his face.
"I want to touch you, and be touched by you." She smiles and shakes her head. "Feel my heart. I'm alive, Ned. You can't hurt me."
He stares down at her, a faint frown creasing his brow, and a long moment passes before he brings his other hand up, holding it just beside her face, still afraid to touch her.
She smiles again, encouraging him with a small nod, and he hesitates a moment longer before finally touching his fingertips to her cheek.
A beat later he rests his hand flat against her face, cupping the curve of her cheek in his palm, and he gives a quiet laugh.
"Your skin is so soft."
She laughs too, and the hand on his cheek slides to the back of his neck as she pushes up onto her toes, bringing her mouth close to his.
"It's okay," she murmurs when he pulls away instinctively. "It's okay. You can't hurt me."
He holds her gaze a moment, and then bends his head forward, allowing her to press her lips to his in a soft kiss.
"See?" she whispers, smiling again. "Magic."
"Magic," he echoes, a grin beginning to curve his lips, and she giggles softly before kissing him once more.
The bell over the door tinkles with her arrival, making him look up, and then freeze in the process of rolling out dough.
For a brief moment, she seems to glow, and in that brief moment, he has a wild thought that she's somehow sunlight personified, but then the door closes behind her with another tinkle of the bell, and he realizes it's just her bright yellow dress combined with her long blonde hair.
Her smile is bright too as she starts towards the counter, and he swipes his hands on his apron as he steps from the kitchen.
"Hi," he says, returning her smile. "What can I do for you?"
"Honestly," she begins, and her expression turns hopeful. "I was kind of hoping you could give me a job."
His gaze flicks around the small restaurant, lighting on the sole patron sitting in a booth by the corner, quietly reading his newspaper, and then back to her.
Her expression is now slightly crestfallen, and she gives an almost imperceptible nod of her head.
"I guess if you're not busy enough to actually need help..." She trails off, and then hitches her smile up again, though he can see the disappointment, and almost desperation, in her eyes. "Worth a shot. Thanks anyway."
She turns to go, and he finally finds his voice. "I, um - wait!"
His voice is louder than he intends, and she whirls back around, one eyebrow arched.
He feels a flush warm his face, and clears his throat. "I could, um, maybe use some help. It's a little dead now -" He stumbles over his words momentarily, causing her to look at him curiously, and then gives a quick shake of his head. "But it usually picks up later on. After work, after dinner, that sort of thing. So I could probably use the help then. And I'm sure they'd like seeing you more than me."
She smiles at the veiled compliment, and he smiles back.
"So when do you want me to start?"
"Is now okay?"
She nods, her smile becoming broad. "Now's great. What do you want me to do?"
"Go check on him," he says, nodding to the man in the corner. "See if he needs anything."
She heads over to the table as he moves back towards the kitchen, and when he hears her cheerful voice, asking the man if he'd like some more coffee or another piece of pie, he can't stop the smile that curves his lips.
Maybe she really is made of sunlight.
He doesn't like to be touched.
It's something she notices almost immediately once she begins working at The Pie Hole, the way he always seems to keep a bit of distance between them, moving his hand away from hers when her fingers get too close to his.
Most of the time it seems like an unconscious effort on his part, like he's so used to it that his body does it for him without him needing to be aware of it.
Aside from that, though, he's a really nice guy, quiet but easy to talk to, and fun to work with, though he's really strict about not letting her see the new food shipments, or go back into the food storage area at all.
He tells her it's because there's just a lot of crates back there, and it can be dangerous sometimes, and he doesn't want her to hurt herself, but deep down she wonders if he's really telling her the truth.
It doesn't really matter, she supposes, since every morning when she comes in there are boxes and baskets full of almost unbelievably fresh fruit in the kitchen.
He gave her a strawberry her first full day, letting her pick the one she wanted out of the basket, and she had lifted her gaze to him, eyes wide, as she bit into the berry.
A moment later she laughed, raising a hand to catch the juice dripping down her chin, and he had grinned and gone to fetch a paper towel, not letting their fingers touch as he passed it to her.
"This is the best strawberry I've ever tasted," she said when she regained her composure and wiped the last of the juice from her chin. "Where do you get them?"
"Trade secret," he replied with a mysterious smile.
After about a week of working there, she's tried every pie flavor he makes, and still can't decide which one she likes best.
They sit together for lunch every day, either at the counter or at one of the booths, but when it comes to dessert, she's the only one who eats the pie, and she asks why he won't have some too.
"I don't eat my own pie," he murmurs, shrugging as he lifts his coffee cup. "I don't want to get sick of it."
He gives her a crooked smile, and she's pretty sure, once again, that he's lying.
The patrons seem to love her, and it's not hard to see why. She's definitely beautiful, lips always curved in a wide smile, her voice cheerful as she greets the customers, takes their orders, delivers their pie, and wishes them a good day.
He can never seem to take his eyes off of her, watching as she flits around the restaurant, the skirts of her pretty patterned dresses fluttering around her knees.
She really is like sunshine, he thinks, unable to deny how much brighter things seem to be now that she's here.
She's even helped him bring in more business, urging him to advertise more and not rely so much on word of mouth.
It helps that he uses pictures of her holding his pies in his advertisements, and it's always amusing when customers come in and recognize her, seemingly surprised that she's a real person who actually works there.
The more time that passes, he finds he's more and more excited to see her every day, and before long, he has to admit that he's developed an attraction to her.
It's not just her looks, but her laugh and her smile, all the different ways she wears her hair, the different colors and patterns of her dresses, the way she sings softly to herself sometimes when she's setting up the new displays on the counter or assembling her tray for delivery.
All of these things endear her to him, but they also make him sad, because no matter how attracted to her he may be - and oh how the nights when he lies awake in bed thinking about her seem to be increasing in frequency - he knows that there can be, and will be, nothing between them.
He leads a lonely life, full of secrets, and there's no way he can bring her into that.
Days turn into weeks, and before she knows it, a month has passed, and then two.
The number of secrets he seems to be keeping from her is greater than what she actually knows about him, but then she's not exactly rushing to divulge her entire life story to him either.
For the time being, it's okay. They still work together in harmony, and something tells her that he didn't smile or laugh nearly as much as he did before she came along.
She can't deny that she's attracted to him, and that her attraction grows stronger with every day and with every new little piece of information he chooses to entrust her with.
At the same time, though, his avoidance of physical contact is beginning to frustrate her.
There isn't even the occasional arm or hand brush, and more and more she just wants to feel his skin under her fingertips, to brace herself against his arm as she reaches around him for something, to lean against him when they sit together in one of the booths to eat their lunch, hold his hand, kiss his lips.
It's a question he won't answer, no matter how many different ways she asks him.
Early in December, she arrives to work early, having been unable to sleep, and thinking that she'd come in and maybe help him bake some of the pies.
She lets herself in the front door with her key, shrugging off her coat and hanging it and her scarf on the coat rack by the counter, and brushes snow from her hair as she starts back to the kitchen.
The top of the work table is clean and bare, ready for another day of baking pies, and she smiles a little when she hears noises from the back room.
She moves across the kitchen, thinking she'll ask if he needs any help, but the words die in her throat when she sees the boxes of dead fruit.
Her nose crinkles at the smell, not terribly strong due to the refrigerated room but still noticeable, and she swallows hard, trying to figure out what this means.
Movement catches her attention, and she looks up to see him with a box of dead strawberries. He plucks one out, and she watches, wide-eyed, as the berry grows plump and ripe in his fingers, the black, shriveled skin transforming back to its original rich red.
A gasp slips from her before she can stop it, and he looks up sharply, the berry falling from his fingers to the small table.
"Quinn -"
"What - what did you just do, what is all of this?"
His eyes flit around the boxes of dead fruit, and his expression is pained, his mouth open slightly as though trying to figure out what to say.
Finally he shrugs helplessly. "If you want to quit, I get it. Just please don't tell anybody."
She frowns and steps timidly into the room, giving a slight shake of her head.
"No, I don't want to quit, I just - explain it to me."
"What do I say?" he says, shrugging again. "I bring dead things back to life just by touching them?"
"That's a start," she murmurs, moving closer to him. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It's not something you just share," he says quietly, staring down at the table now. "I mean, it's not something normal people can do."
"It's extraordinary, though," she says, her voice still soft.
She stops beside him, and he shies away from her as he always does.
"Can - can I?" she asks, gesturing towards the strawberry.
He nods. "Yeah, it's perfectly fine. This is what goes into all of the pies."
She reaches a tentative hand forward and grabs the strawberry, lifting it to her mouth. It feels just like any other strawberry, smells like any other strawberry -
After a brief hesitation, she finally bites carefully into the berry; the flavor explodes on her tongue, and she lifts her other hand to catch a small dribble of juice as it drips down her chin.
"Tastes like any other strawberry," she whispers.
His lips curve in a hollow smile, and she lowers the berry, staring at it for a moment before looking up at him again.
"So why don't you eat your own pies?" she asks, sure she knows the answer, but wanting confirmation.
By way of an answer, he takes the berry from her; it instantly shrivels and blackens in his fingers, and he drops it to the table.
"Anything I bring back to life," he murmurs, rubbing his hand on his apron, "will die if I touch it again. It's perfect for pies, because it never goes bad, but if I eat it..."
He trails off, and she nods.
"And this is why I don't like touching people," he continues, pushing off the table and stepping around her, moving towards the kitchen.
"What do you mean?" she asks, following him.
"They feel like instruments of death," he says, turning to face her, his hands held up in front of him. "Who wants to touch me, who wants to be touched by me, after finding out what I can do?"
She lifts her hands to try to take his, and once again he moves away from her.
"Ned, please."
She steps close to him, and successfully grabs his hands, folding them between both of hers.
His mouth drops open in a quiet gasp, and she shakes her head.
"They're not instruments of death. Not at all. You create things, beautiful things. It's - it's magic."
She separates his hands, bringing one to press it flat to her chest, letting him feel her heartbeat, and lifts her other hand to his face.
"I want to touch you, and be touched by you." She smiles and shakes her head. "Feel my heart. I'm alive, Ned. You can't hurt me."
He stares down at her, a faint frown creasing his brow, and a long moment passes before he brings his other hand up, holding it just beside her face, still afraid to touch her.
She smiles again, encouraging him with a small nod, and he hesitates a moment longer before finally touching his fingertips to her cheek.
A beat later he rests his hand flat against her face, cupping the curve of her cheek in his palm, and he gives a quiet laugh.
"Your skin is so soft."
She laughs too, and the hand on his cheek slides to the back of his neck as she pushes up onto her toes, bringing her mouth close to his.
"It's okay," she murmurs when he pulls away instinctively. "It's okay. You can't hurt me."
He holds her gaze a moment, and then bends his head forward, allowing her to press her lips to his in a soft kiss.
"See?" she whispers, smiling again. "Magic."
"Magic," he echoes, a grin beginning to curve his lips, and she giggles softly before kissing him once more.