A/N: A short little piece based on the song September by Ryan Adams. I'm at one of those points where I have so many ideas and stories floating around that I'm sort of overwhelmed. But, I will push on and get things done. Anyway. The story.
September was a hard month. The heat from summer had yet to leave them alone. He longed for cool, autumn days. He wanted trees to shed their leaves and he wanted wind so biting he walked with his head down. He wanted to wear a jacket when he went outside. He wanted her to huddle closer to him for warmth. He wanted those long, gray days.
Instead, he was sitting up in bed with sweat dripping down his forehead. The fan in the window was on, but it hardly did a thing. She was sitting at the foot of the bed, talking on the phone. It was the doctor again. He could tell by the way her voice had changed after the initial greeting. It had gotten quiet and she had tried to turn away from him. Now, she wasn't saying anything. She was wrapping the telephone cord around her neck and sticking her tongue out of the side of her mouth. It wasn't funny, but she laughed. Her white teeth gleamed as the sun coming through the window hit them. She quickly covered her mouth and then said into the phone, "Yes, I understand. Thank you."
She hung up and looked at him, but quickly turned her gaze down to her hands. Her fingers were fumbling around with the phone cord. She took in a breath and said with her eyes closed, "So…He says I won't make it to winter."
He didn't breathe or say a word. Something inside of him, some crucial part that was helping him function had broken. He felt it. It snapped. As if she had heard it snap, she looked up and met his eyes. He opened his mouth, but then stopped because she smiled. She smiled. It was a true smile and he didn't understand how she could smile. She kept smiling though and crawled towards him. Her eyes were impossibly bright and he wasn't sure what to do with this reaction. She kissed him and he let himself kiss her back. He felt detached from the entire scene. He saw her pull away in slow motion and she smiled again.
This was the first time he cried since he was nine years old. It was silent and he barely recognized what was happening until she touched his face gently. She kissed him once more before she asked him, "Jess, what's there to be sad about?" She genuinely confused, baffled even. He started to cry harder, silent yet powerful sobs. He didn't know if it was her imminent death or her complacent smile that was doing this to him.
She asked the question again, but he wasn't capable of speaking. He sputtered some incoherent words and she frowned. He steadied himself and said, "How can you smile? You're dying!"
She ran her hand along his jaw line and studied his face almost with a look of pity. She said, "But, I'm so happy right now otherwise. I've been so happy for the past three years with you. Why let this ruin everything?"
He shook his head and got out of bed. "No. No, no, no. You're too young, don't you get that? You're only twenty-five! Fuck. You should be…living. We should be getting married and having kids."
There was that smile again, back on her face. She had taken his place and was lying against his pillow as she looked up at him. "So, that's what this is about."
"What?"
"You're upset because you wanted to get married and have a family. You've gone soft, Jess."
He sat back down on the edge of the bed. "I just thought…I saw this lasting for longer. I wanted it to."
"Sorry."
"It's not your fault." He kissed her then and once again she was smiling. He felt it against his mouth. Somehow, he found himself smiling, too. Their teeth knocked together and he pulled away. When his mouth left hers, she let out a laugh. It was loud and full of life.
The following weeks, she was happy. Happier than he'd ever seen her before. At the same time, she was growing weak. He felt it when he touched her. He felt her ribs through her nightgown. He felt her sunken stomach in the middle of the night. Her skin turned pale white. But, she smiled. Always smiled.
She said to him once when the moon's light reflected off the whites of her eyes, "When you love me, I am bulletproof. So much stronger than I was before. Better than I was. I'm not so diseased when you love me. I don't feel sick. I feel whole, complete, finished. And it doesn't matter that this is going to end in weeks, maybe days. I'm not afraid of not waking up tomorrow. Because I've done it. I found you. I found happiness. I found pure bliss and joy. And I could never feel any better than I do right now."
She turned to face him, twisting her frail body in the thin cotton sheets. "Hey," And he looked into her eyes then, despite the fact that every part of him hurt when he did it. "Promise me something." He nodded. "Just…" And for the first time that night, she faltered. For the first time since the doctor's phone call, she looked as though she might cry. "Don't regret things, okay? You know, when I'm…"
He stopped her with a pleading look and fingertips against her mouth. "Don't say…I promise." She looked at him doubtfully and he confirmed, "I won't regret anything."
Somehow, when he kissed her then, it felt like the last. He let his mouth rest against hers, pulling away only enough to tell her that he loved her in a low whisper. She encircled her arms around his waist and held him tightly. Just before drifting off to sleep she said to him, "You're it."
At the end of September, there was a wake. It was held at her mother's house. He wore a suit and tie and tried to appear calm. He kept his hands in his pocket where he was clenching his fists so tight that he was sure his palms were bleeding. He avoided the apologetic faces of others. He kept his head down. He tried to make himself deaf so as not to hear her name being whispered over and over.
At the beginning of October, there was a funeral. He stared at the casket, barely hearing a word that was said during the service. As they lowered it into the ground, he felt as though some great injustice had been done to him, to everyone. He suddenly wished he had had her cremated. A abrupt feeling of claustrophobia overwhelming him as she went further and further into the ground. But, he didn't regret the burial choice. He wasn't supposed to regret a thing.
On her birthday, he went to the cemetery. He studied the headstone from a few feet away and then decided to come closer. He kneeled next to it. His voice was steady and even when he spoke, "I'm sorry. I broke my promise. I regret the fact that you're dead, okay? I regret that I didn't get to marry you." He broke completely. "I'm so sorry. I can't even do this one thing you asked of me. Even now, I'm letting you down. Rory…" Her name came out with a strange noise and he leaned his forehead against the cold headstone. His fingertips were absently finding their way into the grooves of her name.
He felt her then. Her presence filled him, making his entire body feel warm for a moment. His eyes were forced shut at the sensation and he saw her on his eyelids. Instead of the hopelessness he expected to feel from this, he felt an odd sense of levity. And when he opened his eyes, he found himself smiling. He brought a hand to his face to be sure. He felt his teeth, he felt the upturned corners of his mouth. He felt whole, complete, finished.