#Louise Kennedy | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lonelysucker7 · 1 year ago

Text

Cigarettes out the Window

Pairing: Kaine Parker/Louise Kennedy

Summary: Based on the comic “Spider-Man: The Lost Years” (Specifically issue #3). Kaine Parker remembers his intimate time with detective Louise Kennedy and those cigarettes she never stopped smoking.

Word count: 2.5k

Warnings: Heavy angst, mentions of murder and death, mentions of violence, drug references

Not proofread. Wanted to make this after I got inspired by a song. Is it a song fic? Not really, but you could feel the references in here. The fic no one asked but the one I needed haha.

Enjoy!

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Kaine grew accustomed to the smell of smoke over the years.

Everywhere he walked, his nose caught the scent of burn wafting in the air from someone smoking in a dark corner. Or someone dangling their hand mindlessly out the window with the stick in their fingers as he swinged through the city.

But every once and then on the top of a rooftop, the highest there could be in Houston he would stare up in the night sky watching the stars glow. And its beauty becomes interrupted by the smell of smoke.

Even at the highest peak, it was always there.

She was there. Louise Kennedy.

A blur of memories that came back to him even in his sleep, startled him awake and he gasped her name out. His mind raced and his eyes searched the darkness of the hotel room and found nothing. Heard nothing.

Kaine would check on the sleeping Aracely, making sure she was alright and unharmed. Then he would leave to hang out on the balcony, watching the city lights go on and off like little flames in the night.

Nothing would beat their glow except the moon, the stars, the sun and a lighter.

In his own silence he thinks back to those many years ago…

..................................................................

“Louise, why do you smoke?”

The half dressed blonde woman looks back over her shoulder towards the man on the couch who called for her attention. Her pink lips stretched to a friendly smile.

“They calm me down from my high. Or at least, feed more pleasure to it.”

The man nods a little, processing her words carefully. He thinks back to their shared kisses of intimacy and the tongue in his mouth swirls a little inside, tasting the faint flavor of smoke. It was sweet and sour.

His mind snaps back to reality as the couch sinks a little and the weight of Louise’s body acknowledges her presence. He can feel himself starting to smile as her head rests on his shoulder. He watches the way her lips move around the stick adjusting it to comfort, and her nose exhaling the smoke from there.

The way she does these things, it’s strange and amusing to him almost. But he can’t help but wrinkle his nose a little and lift a hand to rub the smell away. This action catches Louise’s attention and she leans away from him slightly.

“Oh, sorry about that Kaine.” Her hand comes up to remove and burn out the cigarette, but her wrist is grabbed gently by him. Kaine shakes his head and assures her.

“Don’t mind me ruining your moment. I’ll get used to it in time.” He offers a faint smile to her. Louise smirks a little in return and she nods, feeling his hand carefully pull away from hers. She drags another bit of the cigarette in her mouth and exhales slowly, letting out a soft giggle.

Louise reaches for her cigarette and she turns to Kaine, raising it up to him. He eyes it curiously, the smoke following its swift trail behind it. Kaine gets the hint she wants him to try it out. With the back of his hand, he pushes it away from him and says,

“No thank you. I… I don’t like it.”

Louise raises an eyebrow, making a face that she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“How could you not like it?”

“Don’t really like the essence of it.”

“So you’ve never tasted it?”

“Never.” Kaine raises an eyebrow at her scoffing. She inhales the smoke again and exhales it with a sigh.

“Everyone smokes here. Am I supposed to believe that easily you don’t?”

Kaine snorts lightly. “I’m not like anyone else.”

Louise rolls her eyes a bit, and she waves him dismissively. She shifts in her seat and amusingly says, “How many times will you go on saying that?”

Kaine shrugs, pushing some of his curls closer to his face almost creating a curtain between him and Louise. He mumbled, “As much as I need to remind… myself.”

Louise sighs a little bit more loudly, and she gets on the couch to sit up on her knees. Her hands trail up to his arm and she leans closer to him. Kaine could smell her perfumed scent mixed in with the smoke, as he closed his eyes when he heard her soft voice near his ear.

“You're right. Remind yourself that. But let me add that it’s because you’re unique. Much more than anyone else here. You're my one in a million.”

Louise's warm hands moved around his body, snaking her arms around him. In the gentle embrace Kaine leaned more into her and let himself be comforted. The tension in his body became relaxed and both him and Louise leaned back on the couch together. He rested his head on her chest, listening to the calm heartbeat and breathing of her smoking.

The dark room is silent for a moment and he breaks it with a soft monotone voice.

“I think I’ll try it out sometime these days. Smoking.”

He feels Louise’s hand pat him lovingly on his back. A soft chuckle rumbles from her.

“Whatever you say sweetheart. I’ll be here for your first.”

..................................................................

On the night of her funeral, Kaine did everything in his power to avoid attending. But after everything, after murdering her it was hard not to go back. A final goodbye at least.

For the night he crashed (literally) in her apartment. Kaine remembered how he slept on the couch that night, afraid to go to her room and not find her there despite knowing she was gone.

Everywhere the smoke of cigarettes and her sweet perfume held him on a chokehold. The room illuminated with the glow of the moon, keeping him both awake and asleep.

Eventually he walked to the curtains and closed them completely, leaving him and the darkness in each other's company.

Kaine stared at nothing in the darkness as his tears streamed down the sides of his face. No sound was uttered as he cried and he could feel himself falling apart by the minute. At this moment he had wished Louise pulled the trigger of the gun on him.

The weight of her betrayal was still fresh in his mind as her facade fell and became the monster he overlooked. Her twisted heart capable of fooling a love to a monster left him so blind and vulnerable. And yet in his mind he still insisted he was something, anything to her. She did spare him. She really did…And both paid the price for their faults.

Her screams couldn’t leave his mind as she struggled violently to be let go of his hold, her back pushing against his chest. He recalled his nose burying near her hair as he smelled her one more time. And the feeling of her delicate neck breaking and burning in his hands was a brutal reminder of the horrible joy he got from relieving the burden Louise had become to him. The many times he kissed that neck and face he never saw what the outcome would be in the end for those parts.

Now he knew.

..................................................................

He left her place the moment the funeral had passed, bothering to clean up whatever mess he left. Underneath the couch he picked out the pack of cigarettes that she must have dropped and become lost.

Mindlessly he shoved those in his back pocket. And checked the place once again. And left.

Atop the buildings he ran and jumped, the rain crashing down to hit him in the face like a whip. Remembering when he first arrived in Utah, the first thing he saw was the graveyard. Not like it mattered to him at the time, only imagining what he would be like dead in one of those places.

For Louise to make it her final resting place was no surprise. How she died could have ended up differently.

He would have preferred her death to be the hand of her own smoking addiction. One where she’d be a dead woman walking.

Living, but dying.

At last he arrived at the graveyard, and he wasted no time walking around each place to find her name. He could have laughed if he realized it should have been obvious which one was hers. Everyone had their own set of flowers, dead and alive.

Louise Kennedy, had none.

Stopping in front of her, he slowly felt his chest swell up with the bubbling feeling of guilt and anger. It was pathetic and almost pitiful to see how her area was completely empty. Maybe she had no family close to her mourning for her. He didn’t sit down on the ground, instead squatting and hunched over as the rain poured down on his head. Kaine didn’t say a word, and just lowered his eyes feeling incapable of reading her name carved on the headstone.

His legs and body began to hurt from the position he was on and he decided to sit in the moist ground. He felt everything soak him up. His face was becoming wet and he couldn’t tell which of the wetness between the rain and his tears were.

Oddly, it was warm.

In his seat he shifted a little as his eyebrow raised when he felt something discomforting from behind his pants. Pulling it out, a shaky breath exhaled from his mouth. His chest hurt even more now that he was holding something very close to the person that once lived: Her pack of cigarettes.

The box was warm in the grip of his hand. Maybe he didn’t bring flowers but he brought her favorite thing. Suddenly an idea popped in his mind. He stared at the ground of her grave and back at the small pack and a startling giggle escaped his lips.

He remembered how he never tried his first cigarette. She said she would be his witness. And here they were: together again. Such a perfect final goodbye for them both. Shaking the box to listen if there was enough, he gritted his teeth in satisfaction. He turns to her grave and a rough mock in his tone rings out.

“Share a final smoke with me, Louise. You said you were gonna see me. Now watch.”

Staring at it he turned it in his hand noting the wrinkles on the surface. He paused when he noticed a faint pink smudge, and dented teeth on the side. His thumb traced there a little, feeling the small bumps underneath his fingertip. The pink smudge spread slightly to the right.

Lipstick.

Perhaps her hands were busy at the time and must have held the box in between her teeth. Well no more of that now. Shaking the box, two cigarettes dropped out on his palm and he pulled out a lighter he had found on a nearby counter.

He ignited the lighter to life with a shaky thumb, taking a couple tries to make the spark. The open flame flickered in and out from the rain that crossed its way. Nearing both cigarette tips, they gently began to burn red and smoke emitted from them.

He closed the cap and tossed it aside on the ground near her headstone. With both sticks in his fingers, he shifted in his seat on the ground. He raised one towards his lips, muttering,

“One for me…”

His chapped lips wrapped around the stick, adjusting them comfortably with a small roll.

“…And one for you.”

He stretched forward and jabbed the cigarette in the middle of the dirt as it stared upwards. Sad quiet eyes watched it fight, keeping itself burning, but the weight of the rain was too much. The stick slowly shrunk down in the dirt, unable to keep its shape intact. The faint sizzle of the stick began to wane, the smoke whipping in the wind.

In an instant… The burn was gone. Now it was his turn.

Carefully he took a slow drag of the cigarette with a pucker, closing his eyes as the smoke of nicotine settled in his lungs. The rich and nasty flavor settled on his tongue like nothing. The familiar taste of her kiss instantly coming back to him and his eyes watered. The rain pattered on his hair heavily, matting down his curls and they stuck on his breaking skin. His breathing ragged a little, already feeling the pinch on his throat and lungs at the same time, and his hands dug the soft earth beneath him.

A haze moved in his mind, almost leaving him in a trance like state. He lolls his head to the side and his eyes read the letters on the headstone.

R…I…P…L…O…U…I..—

“ARGH —!”

Kaine’s body aggressively recoils forward as the cellular degeneration kicks in, and his mouth drops the cigarette onto the ground. His hands reached up to his face, gripping his cheeks as he felt the skin stretch and rip a little apart. Violently he screams as the pain of smoke in his lungs and throat adds to his trigger. It burned and cooled, like chewing a mint gum and drinking water. He chokes out his tears, coughing out and huffing as much fresh air he can to ease his pain.

His eyes keep darting at her headstone, and he shuffles desperately forward quickly pressing his face on the surface of it. He felt the coldness sink calmly onto his skin, wishing for her warm arms to wrap around him. Just like she always did.

The rain kept on and the rumble of thunder came and went from time to time.

The pain eventually left, and he was left in a mess of grime, dirt, blood, and the taste of smoke. Gently he pulls himself away from the headstone and moves back, gritting his teeth feeling his bones shake inside him.

The feeling of wanting to go home ached immensely. But what home? After this what now? Questions he would soon have to respond on his own with any hope he had left. And that was the problem. He hoped too much.

Kaine pushed himself up from the ground, staggering back with a groan. His eye catches the box of cigarettes on the ground, sticks spilled and stained with dirt from his thrashing.

He didn’t know what to do except push the box near her grave and with the heel of his foot, started grinding it down. And he kept doing it and doin it and doing it, a new found rage burning again. He never liked them anyway. He probably never will. His mind rushed in an angry thrill,

I hate you I hate you I hate you—!

“…I-I love you.”

Hurriedly he pushes the dirt and grass onto the cigarettes, burying them and flats it out as if nothing had happened. And he turned away from Louise’s grave, not wanting to look at her again. He walks away with the bitter taste of her cigarette on his tongue. The rain settled down to a quiet drizzle, the peppered stars on the night sky twinkling.

She will never leave his mind. If there was smoke, she would be there.

Always.

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