Disclaimer: Not mine.
Spoilers: Too lazy to check.
A/N: This just popped into my head. I am probably taking a lot of liberties with it, and since it is pre-series and I don't explain hardly anything it might not be received that well, but give it a shot. More chapters to come.
The screen door slammed behind her and her feet slapped against the old wooden porch as she chased after him. She was cold in a sundress while the wind whipped her hair mercilessly. He was on a mission, making his way across the lawn as the thunder cracked above them.
"Cody, don't!" she hollered, her voice barely making it out of her mouth before the wind snapped it up.
"Don't what Lindsay?"
"Don't go!"
"I don't have to stay here and listen to this!"
He opened the door to his truck and got in, slamming the door behind him.
"Cody!"
The truck started and his tires spun, spitting gravel back at her before he roared out of the driveway, leaving her cold and shivering on the porch.
She cursed as loudly as she could into the air before going back inside, letting the screen slam so hard against the frame that it bounced twice. Automatically, she began to clean up the empty beer bottles that littered the coffee table, throwing them in the trash because putting them into the recycling bin just seemed too ironic. She cleaned up the dishes he'd thrown on the floor, glad they were plastic and not broken. She moved the couch back to where it had been, righted the chairs and replaced their wedding picture on the wall. The glass had been broken out of that several outbursts ago.
They'd been getting worse lately. She knew what set him off, and she knew to tread lightly, but he didn't always follow his usual M.O. He drank too much and it happened before she could diffuse it. Had he been anyone else, she would have left him long ago, but the fact of the matter was that they needed each other. She really did love him, even when the alcohol made him crazy, even when he yelled so loud her ears started ringing, even when he called her names that no one should ever have to hear. He was her first crush, her first love, her first everything. She couldn't just forget that.
She picked up the pieces of the coffee mug from where it had landed on the floor after she had thrown it at his head. He wasn't the only one yelling tonight. She'd fought back making it impossible for him to recover from his rage, and this time it was her fault too. She'd challenged things he had said, swiped his beer out of his hand and poured it down the sink screaming at him the whole time.
This was not the life she had imagined when that battered wedding picture had been taken on that warm summer day just a few years ago. No one had believed in them. They all warned her to wait until she was older, wait until they had better jobs, wait until they knew for sure that they wanted to be together. But they didn't listen. And that first year had been perfect. Morning make-out sessions, afternoon phone calls, evenings by the fire or out on the porch, just enjoying each other's company. She knew exactly when things went bad, and she knew exactly why, but there wasn't any going back now. They'd brought too much baggage into this marriage, some of their own, and some they had crafted together. It wasn't the ideal way to start off and she kicked herself daily for being so arrogant.
She finished cleaning up what remained of their dinner, putting the dishes into the sink because doing them tonight just wasn't an option. She moved the clean laundry over to the dryer and slammed it shut, then walked into the bedroom, changing her sundress for one of his long flannel shirts and sliding into bed. He'd be back in a few hours, drunk and sorry and she would see the pain in his eyes and she would scoot over and open her arms to him and he would slide in beside her and they would either cry together or lay silently until sleep took them away.