Rating: R
Characters: Paul/Mellie
Summary: The evolution of Mellie and Paul over the years.
Authors Note: jazmin22=the God of beta's! She's so awesome and encouraging, I don't know what I'd do without her! Also, thanks to latentfunction for the prompt.
He doesn't mean to use her, not consciously anyway. It happens when he's too warn down to care anymore about the way her eyes shift over him or how her warm hands that sit carefully on his shoulder mean this is something more to her than just a welcomed distraction. He doesn't love her. Not like she wants him to, but she's been the only constant over the past two years of turmoil in his life that in a moment of weakness he gives in.
-
He remembers meeting her the first time in the hallway all those years ago; the shy smile she'd gifted him with and the soft lit of her voice as she introduced herself. You can call me Mellie. He thought she liked him then, watching the nervous play of her hands when he'd helped her take her groceries into the apartment. He knows now it was just the way she was, anxious of his presence but not sure how to turn away his helpful offer. Love came later, in the following months, when he'd done little, unthinking things to help her, treating her like his father taught him to treat all women. He'd realized too late, too busy with his own life, chasing dreams of the Dollhouse and a girl named Caroline.
-
He shuts her out. It's the only thing he knows to do. He doesn't have the time to think about the best way to handle it, but pretending he doesn't see the way her face falls when he brushed off her dinners or invitations is harder than he expects. He doesn't help her anymore, even when his hands itched to. He's not a bad man, but he doesn't have the time. It gets easier after awhile, to harden himself a little. Eventually he stops worry over her; every thought he has turns to Dollhouse, every waking moment focused on destroying them and saving a girl that probably doesn't even exist anymore.
-
Months pass and little by little he sees less and less of her. She stops asking him to dinner, stops asking for help fixing silly little things in her apartment. He's silently relieved but there's also something else, a pressing emotion he doesn't recognize. He pushes it away just like he did to her.
-
It all goes south one night in August. He was close, so goddamn close after all those years of chasing ghosts and then it all falls out from under him. He loses his witness and almost loses his job in one bloody night. They take his badge and gun, pending an investigation. He thinks, for the first time, he might have actually gone too far. He might actually lose his job.
He ignores the pitting looks of his coworkers and sees the sorrow and worry under the steely gaze of his superiors. They know he'll keep looking, even if he loses his job and he knows he will too. He can't stop now. There's nothing left for him to do but keep looking.
-
He goes out that night and gets blindingly drunk, stumbles home and falls asleep outside his apartment door. Mellie finds him the morning. He looks like shit and smells worse but she helps him, gets him into his apartment without any pity on her face, just gentle sympathy and concern. She's gone when he's out of the shower but there's a plate of warm food on his counter, wrapped in foil that he eats hungrily.
He almost doesn't see her little note. Take care of yourself.
-
He goes over to her apartment a day later, sobered up and embarrassed to apologize. He stays for dinner and he tells her everything, tells her about Dollhouse and Caroline, about failure after failure and all the people he's pushed away. It feels good to get it all out, to hear his words outside of his head. She listens with patience and he never sees anything like pity on her face, only soft compassion.
After dinner, in her doorway he kisses her, soft and careful. He meant it to be brotherly, a small thanks but it morphs into something more, something less innocent. There's a small voice that tells him to leave, to go before it goes any further but she tastes like the warmed wine from dinner and her cheek is so soft in his hand that he doesn't resist when she pulls him back into her apartment and they stumble their way to her bed.
She falls with a quiet whoosh, breath knocked out of her before he climbs on top of her. Everything is slow and unhurried as his fingers draw down her long skirt and unbutton her shirt. She takes him inside her with a small gasp, and the light pressure of her fingers across his shoulders all the encouragement he needs. She's all soft curves and full breasts in his hands. He closes his eyes when he kisses her, doesn't want to see the love pooling behind her light brown eyes. Paul, Paul she whispers to him; cries out in the dim light of her bedroom when he buries his head in the soft, fleshy juncture of her neck and shoulder and rides his release.
She shudders below him, neck arched back and eyes closed. He watches her mouth, open and close, gasping for air against the feeling rolling inside her. She's beautiful, face flushed, and he sees for the first time something real and honest after years of lies and deceit. He remembers how she listened to him at dinner, at the fumbling but real attempts to be a friend to him at first, only to hide away her love and just be there for him later.
He thinks about all the wasted years and friends he pushed away. Thinks about all his failures. "I love you," he says, surprised to find that he means it, that this moment has been building inside him for years. "I love you," he tells her again, kisses her and holds her face in his hands.
"I love you, too," she whispers, brows lifted with a happiness that overwhelms him. Her face is open, so vulnerable that it awakens something deep and real inside him that he didn't expect to feel again. Suddenly all the struggle and pain of the past years seem so distant, so unimportant in light of her. He wants…so much in that moment that it overwhelms him completely.
-
When he wakes up in the morning she's gone. There's a small moment of panic that climbs in his throat before he hears the clatter of pans and in the kitchen. He finds her on the floor, laughing at herself. There are two frying pans and bowl on the floor, scattered around her feet.
"I was going to make you breakfast," she says.
"Looks like you could use a little help," he teases, helping her up. She flushes and he likes how pleased she is by his offer. It's nice, relaxing in way he's beginning to identify with her, to make breakfast. There's moments of awkward silence, when he feels her shift nervously beside him, like she thinks he's going to bolt at any moment.
He takes her hand, squeezes it and smiles until she slows, calms under the unspoken promise.
-
He doesn't leave her apartment until the next morning when he has to for his hearing. "I'll be here when you get back," she tells him, standing up on her tiptoes to kiss him shyly. He smiles, feels that strange sort of happiness rising inside when he realizes that yes, she will be there when he comes home.
"See you later Mellie," he says and kisses her, enjoying the small little gasp of surprise he swallows up.
-
There's a knock at the apartment door a few minutes later and Mellie bounds up from her seat at the table, laughing. "Paul," she says, opening the door. "Did you forget-oh." The tall man standing in her doorway isn't Paul but he's familiar all the same.
"Are you ready for your treatment Mellie?"
"Of course," she says, eyes still bright and lips still tingling from Paul's goodbye kiss. "Let me get my jacket."