tea stained newpapers. mileven au.

twenty two.

her golden orbs scanned the room mindlessly, focusing on the various unused brushes and opened paints. she needed to work, unfortunately. but she couldn't bring herself to drag her small body off the floor just yet.

especially not when those damp feline almonds caught a glimpse of a certain stack of papers resting not too far away from her limp position on those hardwood panels.

honestly, she didn't know what she wanted to do with those newspapers once mike allowed her to have them. she simply thought they were pretty, and even if she never found the time to make these papers into something purposeful, she still wanted to have them just to have them.

which is definitely the reason why they had been sitting on the bottom shelf of one her metal tables for a few weeks now, taking up space and becoming even stiffer than they ever were originally. and if she's telling the entire truth, she's thought about using them as a tarp to cover the floor while she worked. that probably would have saved her a lot more time spent cleaning up this run down space she calls her studio.

but she hasn't... for some reason.

the brunette pushed her body up, reaching for the stack of sticky papers before propping her back up against wall behind her.

newspapers have always been something extraordinary to el, similar to how she thought novels were the most abnormal thing in the world. as silly as it sounds, to her it was crazy how just a stack of thin sheets of paper could hold so much information, so many moments in time. the artist truly didn't understand how people were able to combine words in such a beautiful way.

she carefully flipped one of the papers into her lap, pulling her knees up close to her chest before narrowing her damp golden orbs to search the print in front of her until she found the one name she was looking for.

for as long as el had been hanging around mike, the artist had never had the chance to read any of his work. don't get her wrong... she was always extremely impressed with his way of words. and even though sometimes he was an absolute dork when explaining things, she knew that his writing was probably a thousand times better than how he talked.

yet, it never crossed her mind that she could sit down and actually read the pieces he has developed, that stringing mind of his making knots as he webbed together the perfect story.

and that perfect story... was it something unforgettably dreamy.

once she located his name carefully placed next to lucas's underneath that large new york times font, she was able to make out the tiny lettering of an article that was written just over a year ago. unironically enough, the piece was about a couple. his enchanting words suddenly transporting her to a completely unknown city as he narrated the story of a young girl who once wrote love letters to an imaginary lover.

a lover who soon turned out to be completely real... and by far completely in love with her and her secret envelopes that showcased the most divine handwriting stained onto a sheet of lavender paper.

she would be lying if she said that his descriptions didn't make it feel as if she was sat right in front of these people, listening and enjoying their stories as they spoke softly into the air around them. their hands were probably interlocked, resting carefully on the vintage wooden table in front of them while mike wheeler's pen scratched gently against a notepad.