Dedicated to Glista for being fantastic <3

Thirty: Candy Apple Red.

“I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in.”

-Anais Nin

I think you really start to know a person, to understand them, when you people-watch with them; when you sit with them on a bus stop bench in the rain and quietly observe the world as it blurs past; when they are the only thing to stop you from drowning in a sea of muted colors and spinning sound.

I like to think that I knew you before that gloomy Sunday, but I think that was the day that you actually began to make sense, that the contents of your mind were willingly spilled into my hands. At the very least, it helped to pry my eyes open just a little bit further in regards to who you really were.

It was sprinkling outside, but the awning over the bench kept us dry. People hurried by all around, umbrellas unfurled, and took no notice of the girl and boy sitting there and watching them all.

“Look at that guy over there,” I remarked, flicking a finger across the street. You looked up, narrowed your eyes—blinked twice as you caught sight of the young man, dressed entirely in firetruck red and standing on a skateboard with a boombox balanced on his shoulder. As the light changed, he glided across the street, taking no notice as he coasted through a puddle and sprayed an army of sensible-shoe tourists.

“Oh my,” you said, as he disappeared down the block. That was all, but then there was the flurry of wind-stricken pages, the scratch of ballpoint against the notebook in your lap.

“We'll call him Eric,” you told me.

This was how you watched people; you stood aside and let them pass, but froze them momentarily with your pen, captured them in the span of a heartbeat with words on paper. It was, you explained, the way you developed all your characters.

I watched too, helping where I could, but for a lot of the time I studied you out of the corner of my eye. I watched your hair, waves of russet brushstrokes in the air. Your cheeks pink with the cold, your green eyes bright and ringed with makeup. Your lips, candy apple red, pursed in concentration. You were bright and colorful, a peony painted onto the gray afternoon. You were dazzling.

Our tea, to go, sat in paper cups beside us, losing steam with every heartbeat. Occasionally you'd pause, take a sip, and leave a smile for me. Then you'd turn, back to being a silent watcher.

“Look there,” you'd say every now and then, pointing to that little girl in pink high heels chasing after her mother, or that tall man with the umbrella who ran into a streetlamp while looking down at his phone. There are characters everywhere, you told me. Just waiting, waiting for someone to find them.

You were bright-eyed when you finally took a break, your scarlet lips knit into a smile. I pulled my camera from my pocket and snapped your picture as you briefly closed your eyes. I was getting a lot of use out of the thing, it's just that nearly every photograph I took was of you.

I watched the captured moment slip out of the camera, and fingered the glossy paper for a moment before sliding it into the notebook with all the others. It was the notebook you'd given me, my Christmas gift, and I'd taken to carrying it everywhere, so that I'd always have a story at my fingertips and because it reminded me so much of you.

You yawned softly, then sighed, your loose bun teetering atop your head. Then you leaned over and kissed me, for no reason except because you could, and wanted to, and no one was going to stop you.

I certainly wasn't, anyway.

When you pulled away, you glanced skyward, where the rain was letting up but the clouds were still looming. A slight frown spiraled your lips, and you adjusted your scarf.

“Autumn leaves are perplexing, Sam,” you stated abruptly.

I looked at you; you were concentrating on a tree branch above our heads, bare except for three clinging leaves. Two in gauzy yellow, one in red carpet crimson.

“How so?” I questioned.

You breathed, prepared, gathered words to your chest. “Because they're so—so determined.” Your sentence lifted at the end, a question to yourself. Was that what you wanted to say? No—you shook your head.

“That's not the right word,” you amended, “but I don't know how else to describe it. I'm just fascinated by the way they cling on like that, through the snow and rain and wind, even though it's not their season anymore and they could just give up.”

You paused and thought for a moment. I tried to think of a response, but you spared me the trouble.

“They're like people, I think.”

I raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure that?”

“Because...because think about it, Sam. Some of them are quitters; they fall off right away, just give up and let go without even trying. But then others hang on for dear life and refuse to let anything tear them down. Some of them are fighters.” You tipped your head back. “Except that their fight is hopeless, either way. They can try all they want, but they can't prevent their evanescent nature, the fact that they're going to burn out in the long run. They won't last forever.

“But I guess,” you said, “that's why they're beautiful. We appreciate them because they're only here for a little while.” A sigh escaped your lips. “I just wish we could appreciate our lives that way. We're only blinks, just like the leaves, but we take it for granted because our eternity feels longer.”

You brushed a wayward strand of hair out of your face, skirting your gaze above my head. Silence fell, and as we watched, a particularly audacious gasp of wind plucked the red leaf from its perch and dragged it into the sky. It turned somersaults in the air and spun against the cloud cover before speeding away down the street.

We leaned over to watch its journey, following it with our eyes as it twisted out of reach of a child's grabbing hands, tickled the tips of a tall woman's hair, slapped against a windshield, but somehow managed to dance away from the wipers in time to catch another gust. It was a splash of candy apple red against a perpetual monochrome, and we watched it until it surfed out of our sights.

We reached for each other's hands. Breathless.

When you looked at me, your eyes were wide like you'd just seen something fantastic, like you'd just had the experience of a lifetime and you were forever changed. It was this expression of realization and self-certainty, and I didn't know how you could get that from a leaf but I didn't doubt that whatever words you were about to say would be glowing.

“Ellery?” I prompted.

It took a moment. You were speaking in lyrics; you were sculpting me a poem right before my eyes. These were your words, your thoughts; your voice was your weapon and the air was your canvas. To get it right, it took a moment of consideration.

“I want to be that leaf,” you said at last. “I want to be strong, and a fighter. But...I don't want to hang on forever. I want to know when to let go, and to treat it as an adventure, so I can go out with a bang, like a hurricane or a thunderstorm or—” You sipped the air. “I want to be unstoppable and unforgettable and incomparable and so many other things, countless things, and I don't know how I'm going to manage it all when I have so little time, Sam, I really don't. But I just—I just want to do something. I love watching, but I don't want to sit on the sidelines forever. I want to be in the pictures for once, instead of looking at them. I want to be somebody's everything.”

But you are in the pictures, I wanted to say. Here, let me show you, all these pictures of you I have tucked away.

“You are,” I said, simple. “You are.”

I didn't elaborate; you didn't ask me to. I don't even know if you heard me. Your eyes were fierce and steely and shimmering, and you were looking after the memory of the leaf with bursting intensity. This was yet another side of you, another simplified personality among hundreds. Thousands, maybe.

You are, I repeated, this time in my head. You are, and I couldn't say the rest out loud. You are somebody's everything. You're my everything. And I can only hope that I'm enough.

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A/N: I feel like the photo on the side describes Sam and Ellery's relationship perfectly.