A Good Man, a coronation street fanfic

"I'm a good man. I'm a good man. I'm a good man." He hoped if he said it enough, it would still be true.

Carla climbed into the shower without even removing her underwear, as though she barely noticed it was still there. Even clad in just bra and knickers she barely flinched at the cold water hitting her body, letting it run over her bare skin but it wasn't enough. Nothing was ever enough.

As the water continued to cover her ice cold skin, Carla let the soap soak into a flannel, hardly noticing as it ran and ran, trickling onto the shower floor before she realised she was still pouring. Her hands shaking from the cold she was standing in she began to wash herself, lightly at first and then harsh, so harsh. Scrubbing away at her skin as though she could scrub away anything at all. As though she could wash away the memories she'd treasured that were now so dirty, so tainted, so wrong.

She would do anything to make it go away, her skin getting redder by the minute as she ignored her fiancé banging on the bathroom door and his concerned voice, trying to take a layer of herself off, trying to feel human again because she felt anything but human. Anything but right. She was all so wrong.

Carla tugged at her bra after a while, desperately trying to pulling it from her like it burnt to touch. Once she was free of all clothing she continued the assault on her skin that bled in places, not feeling the pain or rather feeling it and yet embracing it, relishing in it, needing it. She'd long since lost sense of what she was washing away. Whether it was her new found and unwanted identity or her reckless infidelity she just wanted it to be gone. She could smell Robert on her weeks later, she could taste the way his rough, hurried kisses tasted every time Nick tried to love her. Every time he placed an incomparable, gentle kiss to her forehead she felt another piece die, something else fade away. She was fighting a losing battle against something that would never be over.

She's so cold, and yet she's not. Her body is fragile, the water and the rawness making it feel outside how she felt inside. Her body is so cold but her heart is not. People think is it, they think she cares too little and she wishes she did. She wishes she didn't care at all. She's the only one that knows it all, she is the only one who remembers five year old Carla desperate for some kind of acceptance from her mother and a father who would protect her. She never got either until far, far too late.

Carla doesn't react as Nick eventually breaks the lock of their bathroom and doesn't look at him until he is covering himself in water to pull her from the shower, a towel wrapped around her body to protect her in some way that he knows will never be enough. He doesn't know if even he will ever be enough. He doesn't know anything at all. Nick takes her entire weight, supporting her brokeness and leading her out of the bathroom, leading her away from the pain she inflicted on herself even if he couldn't take it back. He couldn't take anything back.

Carla's head lulls against his shoulder as she let's him take lead, have control. She doesn't want it.

"I slept with Robert."

She's shivering and he swears he misheard. He must have misheard.

"What about Robert?"

She's pulling away and looking in his eyes and hers are so much less green than usual. Something has died, a light has gone out.

"I screwed him."

And just like that, the world is on its head. Carla is talking, explaining but Nick is not hearing. He can't hear. He can't breathe. He feels like he can't exist. All he can do is try to think back, to remember the last time he'd kissed her, the last time they'd been blissfully happy before her own world fell apart and she became somebody she didn't know how to be. The more he tried, the less he could remember and he doesn't remember because he didn't know it was the last time. You never know it's the last time. You think it'll never run out, you think there's always more around the corner. He wishes he could bottle the way it felt when she would fall asleep against his chest or fiddle with his hair or throw him a dirty giggle in the privacy of their home. He wants to feel it forever instead of what he feels right now. He wants to remember.

She talks and talks but he's not hearing what she is saying now but what she said a million memories ago.

"I will hurt you in the end."

"I'll take my chances."

"You should go." It falls out quickly and he moves away from her so he doesn't see her face fall or hear the crack of her heart breaking.

"Nick, please I just want to talk. You've been asking me for weeks to talk so now let me. I'm ready."

"You're ready?! You tell me you've cheated on me with my chef, the man whose planning our wedding menu and now you're ready to talk, Carla?" I don't mean go to Michelle's or a hotel, I mean go. Go somewhere. Anywhere but this street. Go to London or LA, you always said that was your favourite place. Just leave."

She's felt a thousands types of pain but his rejection is fresh and new and all her own fault.

"No.. Nick, please. You're a good man, Nick. The best man, god knows I don't usually go for them but you are the best man and I know you can forgive me. You have to, baby, you have to. You just have to.

He doesn't answer, doesn't look at her. He can't. How do you look at the person you know could fix you when they are the one who has left you so broken? How do you ever recover when the person you are building a life with is crumbling in front of you and yet you hate them half as much as you love them. Nick's mind is clouded, thoughts he can't fathom making him feel sick as he places his hands against the sink and looks at the drain, feeling like his life was falling into it with the water he ran.

He splashes his face and blinks quickly, trying to understand how he blames her and yet doesn't blame her at all. She is wired incorrectly, a mess of lies, rejection and loss and a suffocating self hatred that has made her the woman she is today. He wants to tear her down but fix her up again. He wants to cover their holes with plasters and bandages, he wants to stop the blood they are losing, the memories they haven't made yet that are already over and yet not even begun.

"LA in't my favourite place." He raises his head slightly, still leaning against the sink but showing he is listening though he won't look, can't look, mustn't look.

Mustn't cave.

"Weatherfield in't my favourite place, LA in't my favourite place. My favourite place isn't some beach or a factory, Nick. It's you. It's how I feel when I'm around you. You're me home. I wish you weren't. I wish I could walk away and I didn't have to beg like some desperate cow. God, I laughed in Peter's face when he played this card but I am doing, I'm begging ya. You 'ave to find it in your heart to forgive me. Don't give up on me. Please, please don't give up on me like the rest."

Her voice is broken and her words make his heart sting and ache and Nick knows there isn't a plaster big enough to cover his wounds.

Suddenly he looks at her and he is moving to be in front of her and she thinks maybe she can come home. Come back to him. His hands hold the tops of her arms and she ignores the agony that shoots through her body at the feel against her raw skin because it feels so nice to have his heat against her again.

"I'm not your favourite place anymore. I'm not your favourite anything." His mouth says words his mind didn't know were coming, as though his brain is indifferent from his body. He feels his heart pounding against his chest like it is shouting at him, like he is wrong but he has always known his brain injury had changed him in ways he never understood. Until now.

Carla is crying and his heart is hurting but is mind is so angry and he needs her away because the conflict in his own body makes him hurt. His fingers tingle with a want to hold her tight as they touch her and yet he finds himself pushing her away, towards the door, towards anything but him.

He doesn't mean for her to slip. He swears he tries to catch her but he isn't fast enough and as her head cracks against the coffee table they had brought together and her body crumbles to the floor he wishes he had gone with his heart and not his mind. He swears he didn't think someone so little could have so much blood and yet it doesn't stop, it never stops.

Nicks heart begs him to collapse next to her, to cradle her, make her wake up, make it okay. His mind makes him back away, cower in the corner with his arms around himself, his eyes not leaving her.

"I'm a good man. I'm a good man. I'm a good man." He hoped if he said it enough, it would still be true.