Clandestine
It's dark.
He can't decide if it's because he hasn't turned the hallway light on for six years and isn't going to start now, or if it's because his eyes are still closed.
Still closed?
He groans in frustration, slides to what he thinks is the floor, but may very well be an elephant. Or a magic carpet. Or anything else. The alcohol renders him speechless, sightless, essentially, senseless, and he prefers it this way, because all those senses make him capable of perception. If could get his head around anything, if he could really perceive the circumstances, he wouldn't have gotten the day off work today.
Even the boss needs an excuse to call in sick.
Later he'll write, influenza on his calendar, on his BlackBerry, somewhere, anywhere. This September, it's on his right hands, scrawled almost illegibly, and on an absurd angle so the n becomes a c and before he knows it, he's looking down at the real reason why he takes one day off, every September. The letters dance before his eyes, slowly, mournfully, yet mockingly.
He's colder, suddenly, he realizes, shivering against the wall. At least, he hopes its a wall he's leaning against, and not an ocean liner or something equally as absurd. It's the cold that defies the lingering affect of the alcohol in his bloodstream, clouding his thoughts.
Suddenly, he's thrust out into the open air, and there's a faint, distant pressure on his back, the presence of another human being, gently guiding him down the darkened passage.
A lonely scent tickles his nose, and he groans again because this means his sense of smell has returned, and of course, it's that one unmistakeable scent. Gray sheets, he thinks and he sniffs the air a moment before he's pushed down onto the bed.
"You should sleep," comes a voice that he deems familiar.
"N'tired," he manages, even though he exhausted. That's not the problem. His eyes have been closed for hours, he just can't seem to sleep.
There's something cool and comforting in his right hand, so he grips it harder when he feels it begin to slip and utters, "Don't."
She lets go but adds, "That's not going to help, Mac."
In response to his name, he looks up and tries to see through the darkness, but does so in vain. Even if I could...he begins to think, but the thought is gone before he can take it any further.
"Don't leave, okay?" he reaches out and palms the air until he hits something, suede, but even that isn't enough.
Then he's on his knees, because he doesn't trust his feet, and he's touching her with no perverse intent, but rather to run his fingers across her flesh. Something real, something organic, that's what he needs to feel, so he knows that she's really there and buried somewhere beneath the rubble and iron and his darkest memories, he's real too.
He presses his fingers up against the first familiar texture he can find, "Are you still here?"
"Yes," she replies, and he feels her move against his fingers.
She turns to move his palm from her lips, but it's pointless. Now that he's got her, he isn't about to let go.
"Don't," his arm wavers a moment, as though he's unable to hold it up by himself anymore, "Don't."
"But-"
"Please?"
And she's about to cry from the hopelessness of his plea, so she says nothing, and prays he'll say nothing too. She can't bear to hear his voice crack again, it's the only part of him that hasn't crumbled. All these years and he has nothing to show for his strength.
She takes her time putting him to bed, so she can prolong the amount of time she can spend touching him with a legitimate reason. Except that none of this is legitimate, but she ignores that in favour of the hard creases of his face that soften once his head hits the pillow. He struggles to stay awake, tugs on her sleeve when she moves away from his face to let her know that he isn't going to let her leave any time soon. But even if he wanted to, she thinks, he couldn't stop her if she decided to depart. The alcohol would stop him in his tracks, prevent him from even reaching the bedroom door. Then it would cloud his memory, so he wouldn't be able to remember that the hallway light had burned out seven Septembers ago, and he'd never had the heart to fix it.
Yet she stays. She stays and pulls the cold, grey sheets from their stagnant position at the edge of the bed. It's as if they've been starched, she muses as she struggles to unfold them. She pulls the leather shoes from his feet, admires their sheen, and wonders where on earth he's been wearing them because he didn't come in to work today.
When she thinks he's asleep, or at least is docile enough to lower his defence, she pulls the Bailey's from his hand and resists the urge to throw it at the wall. It's not the right time to scold him, to remind him of his weakness. But she knows that the moment that happens, she'll be full of evidence to the contrary, she'll have a thousand justifications for his loneliness, for inability to cope with his own pain and his uncanny talent for coping with everyone else's. It doesn't seem fair.
She's about to pull the sheets up to his neck when she notices that she's overlooked something. A smile – her first real one, in an entire day – graces her features, as she hunches over him and lowers her hands to his throat. There, she loosens the severe black tie and slides it gently away from his neck. She doesn't touch him with her fingers, but its the affection behind the gesture that makes it feel like a caress, and it's this that rouses him.
He grabs her wrist with speed that he shouldn't even be capable of at this time of night. She's still for the first time in her life.
Mac's eyes ease open, and just barely, through the darkness he thinks he sees the face that will haunt him forever.
But there is no face. Instead, he can faintly make out the glow of her eyes. A relentless spark of light dances within them, and it's the only thing he'll remember about his careful companion the next morning.
"I love you," he says it like its an apology, "I love you. So don't."
He's full of don'ts tonight it seems, but she cannot deny him, "Don't what?"
"Don't leave."
It scares him how easily he can bring his hand to her face and trail his shaky fingertips along her jaw line. Her skin feels firm and taut, but he wastes no time in convincing himself that he can take care of that. He can get her to relax, to unwind, to stay with him, if he tries just a little bit harder.
"This won't fix anything, Mac," she tries too, "You just... you have to give it time... "
He wants to tell her that he's given "it" all the time in the world. He's taken the mandatory mental health days, he's talked to the department shrink, he's drowned himself September after September, if only to find a way out.
"I'm tired of waiting," his hand trails down her face, stops at the crook of her neck before his fingers explore her collar bones, tracing the jugular, rubbing her shoulder.
"Tired of waiting for what?" she challenges.
He gives her a sharp look, one she probably can't see through the darkness.
"What are you waiting for, Mac?"
He takes a breath and feels it catch in his throat. She's too close – too close to the truth, that he can't breathe. He feels her aura envelope him, and he wants to give into it, but whenever he tries he finds himself being suffocated rather than comforted.
"For her," he says finally, "I'm waiting for her to come home... but she isn't ever going to come home, is she?"
With that, he excuses the inappropriateness of the situation in favour of kissing her lips. She's immobilized by the gesture, despite the fact that it would be easy for her to end it on purpose. His lower back begins to ache from the strain of holding himself up against gravity, with only the pull from her – those damn unseen forces of attraction – keeping him from breaking the kiss.
If only she would respond and give him a reason to desist. If only she would give him some kind of sign. A slap, a shove, or some other form of retaliation. Then, ever the gentleman, even when drunk, then he would have to lay back and apologize over and over and–
"Mac," she mumbles against his lips, and he jumps from the friction.
"Don't," there it is again.
He sits up properly, adjusting her shoulders so that she's upright as well as if in preparation for another kiss. But before that, he stares at her, tries to study her face to no end. It's too dark, and he's too broken. He doesn't want to recognize her any more than he actually can.
That makes it easy for him to kiss her senseless.
He wants to smirk when he tastes the whiskey on her tongue, but it doesn't seem right to. After all, he's had his fair share of Baileys for the night, and he isn't about to go pointing fingers at her, especially when he can't locate her properly to do so.
"I should go..." she tries again, but her voice trails off and turns into a whimper as he lowers his lips to her neck.
Suddenly all she can think of is, How did we come to this?
Still, she knows all too well the components of this comfort-fuck cocktail. Two parts alcohol, one part heartbreak, shake and serve chilled. But it's hot in the room all of a sudden and then she's the one suffocating beneath his firm figure. She's the one who's out of breath. She's the one who can't find it within herself to end it before it goes too far.
She finds he has a particular fondness for the skin of her neck. He rakes his teeth across the flesh, then soothes it roughly with his tongue. Then, almost out of spite, he brushes his lips across her jugular repeatedly, eerily satisfied by the whimper he elicits.
He makes a promise to her among the sheets that she'd so thoughtfully warmed for him. He makes a promise that he'll try harder next year and the year after that, and the year after that. He's going to try and make sure that she's still here, with him, in the years to come, and he does all this without once seeing her face among the shadows from which she's retrieved his redemption.
--
The tickle at the tip of his tongue – much like the itch in his heart – does not disappear come Thursday morning. He turns over to one side, notices the empty bed, and is only slightly surprised. He wants to think that he made it through the painful transition from the night of September 11th, to the morning of September 12th all by himself, but the rested feeling within his body makes him believe otherwise.
She's gone, and he has only a vague idea of who she is, and where she's gone, and why she's gone.
His eyes zero in on note, scribed on an old grocery receipt next to his bed.
Hope you're feeling better
Love, Peyton.
Feeling only moderately disgusted with himself, he heaves his body out of bed and is surprised by how light it feels. He prepares for the day, carries out all the same mundane tasks he's carried out every day of his life for as long as he can remember. He showers, shaves and selects a crisp white shirt and a pair of regulation black pants from the closet.
Lastly, he grabs the tie that lay loosely folded on his bedside table, slips it around his neck and steps out into the world.
--
The day is about as boring and mundane as can be – and he's never been happier. This may very well be the best September 12th he's had in seven years, and that's saying something.
"A turtleneck? It's only September, Stella," he hears Lindsay comment as the two women walk past him, barely aware of his presence.
"Whatever you say," is the deflated reply from the older woman, "Let's grab some sushi."
Mac waves to them when Lindsay looks back (probably as an afterthought).
Then he glances at his watch and smiles. 4 o' clock p.m. and he's almost giddy with anticipation of the discreet plans he's made for the evening. 4:05, and destiny is striding towards him, graceful and charming as usual.
"Where are we headed?" asks Peyton, and she lets out a surprised little noise when he pulls her to him and kisses her the way he's wanted to all day.
When it's over, he pulls away and studies the stars in her eyes and smile. There's no mistaking it – she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen this close to him before.
He moves even closer, "I was thinking we'd stay in tonight."
--
His phone goes off at just the wrong time. No surprise there.
"Taylor?" The conversation is dull, the results even more so.
Peyton's hands skim across his chest, feeling the history there and asking to know more about it. He chooses to ignore her persistence, and instead decides to lose himself in her touch. However that only makes it a little harder for him to admit that this evening is coming to an abrupt end.
"Thanks for dinner," she remarks and squeezes his bicep to let him know that that's not the only thing she's thankful for.
A moment later, her pager beeps and in the time it takes for her to turn it off, he's already on his feet and is pulling on his shirt, "Sorry about this."
"No worries," she swings her legs to the side of the bed and tries not to be disappointed, "I'll start the coffee."
She's about to leave when he surprises her for the second time that day and pulls her in for a final kiss.
"You're getting really good at that," she says, pulling away and then brushing her lips against his once more.
He says nothing in reply, just brings his hand up to rub against her neck, feeling the skin there.
And the first clue is that it shouldn't be as soft as it feels, "Peyton?"
"Yes Mac?" she skips off to the kitchen, eyes shining.
He follows, "Never mind."
The coffee's as good as instant coffee gets, he decides, but something inside of him yearns for a little extra sting. He figures since they're not technically on the clock yet, a little indulgence couldn't hurt.
She watches him with curious eyes as he heads to the low cabinet next to the neglected television set, and pulls from it a familiar bottle. He flings a tie over his shoulder – it had been thrown there carelessly in their haste to get to the bedroom – and uncorks the bottle. He wants to feel warm inside, he thinks, as he pours a generous amount of the dark liquid into his mug and watches it swirl past the bubbles on the surface.
He's shocked when she lifts her own mug to her lips and downs the entire beverage before he even has a chance to offer her any whiskey.
"What was that all about?" he asks, following her to the front door, coffee forgotten.
"Nothing," Peyton slips on her shoes.
Leaning over to tighten the tie, she says with a smile, "I hate whiskey."
Whiskey.
Shadows. Grey sheets.
Turtlenecks in September. Broken hallway lights.
"I love you."
Suddenly he has a very sinking feeling.
fin
November 2008