First Impressions by Josephine Myles

First Impressions
    By Josephine Myles
    For Lou Harper, for believing in this story, and for JL Merrow, who helped knock the final version into shape.
    The first thing I noticed about him was his socks.
    That was pretty unusual for me. No, wait, that was unprecedented. Usually I’ll notice a well-sculpted face, a long pair of legs, or a pert arse first (not necessarily in that order). I honestly couldn’t say I’d ever noticed a man’s socks before the rest of him.
    They were the brightest things in the whole train carriage, a whirling pattern of lime and magenta that made my eyeballs itch. I could only see them because he had one pinstriped leg crossed over the other, hitching the fabric up enough to reveal a few startling inches between the tops of his shiny brogues and the hem of his trousers.
    I tracked the stripes up his legs to the sheaf of paperwork in his lap, the neatly buttoned jacket, the Windsor knot at his throat, up farther to a face that was nondescript in every way. They weren’t the kind of features I’d be interested in sketching: pursed lips, regular nose, grayish eyes. Dark hair tamed down with product, with just a few unruly curls defying the Brylcreem tyranny. In appearance there was little to distinguish him from the thousands of other young businessmen making their way into London on the Metropolitan line every day.
    Then he looked up at me.
    Those eyes! In the sickly, fluorescent lighting they were bleached of any definite color, but the rings around the irises were dark, like targets. I was drawn in, against my will, and then the smug bastard only went and leered at me. Those priggish lips twisted themselves up into a filthy grin, the regulation eyebrows quirking into a lopsided come-on.
    I looked down at my boots, my battered old army boots. I looked at my dirty jeans, smeared with a spectrum of colors from when I was too lazy to find a brush cleaning rag and the thick dreads lying heavy over my shoulders. That couldn’t have been a come-on. There’s no way a suit like that would look at a scruffy loser like me. And there’s no way I’d be interested in someone like that: capitalist scum, feeding off the hard-working proletariat. I snorted and gave myself a mental kick up the backside. I was starting to sound like the militant lefties I did my best to avoid at uni. My fault for reading Marx directly before going to bed.
    My eyes darted up again. He was absorbed in his paperwork. I must have imagined it, probably had too much to drink last night. I really should start eating a proper breakfast, instead of grabbing a sugar waffle from the stand on my way in to the studio.
    I got off before him, leaving for my connection at Baker Street. I thought his gaze might have flicked over me as I walked past, but I couldn’t really tell. When I looked back in through the grimy window from the platform, he was immersed in his work.
    ***
    The next time I saw him, his socks were lilac with burnt orange spots. Hideous things that left a negative image of themselves floating in my vision. The day after that was the turn of a crimson pair with aquamarine robots dancing across them. Did he pick these things himself? If so, he shouldn’t be allowed to shop without a friend in tow. Preferably one with decent taste, although let’s face it, even a blind man could probably pick out something less migraine-inducing.
    I realized that he always sat in the same seat, always working, and figured that he must get on at one of the first stations on the line. That made sense, as the Metropolitan line started out in the genteel dormitory towns populated by stockbrokers and merchant bankers.
    I found myself sitting in the same seat opposite him, day after day. I got to know the impertinent spring that poked into my arse, the strips of gaffa tape repairing the rips, the marker pen graffiti behind his shoulder with its command to “Suk my huge dick”.
    I found myself wondering if he’d chosen that seat deliberately. If