Title: Waste
Rating: Strong T. Is that a thing? Just made it one. Nothing too too graphic.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not mine at all.
Synopsis: My season 6.
Author's note: I have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow. Good luck my friends and God bless. This is a full on attempt to make myself feel better. Feel free to leave reviews- I like to hear from people.
You run. You hear the words spill out of her mouth, see the hope in her eyes and feel the crushing weight of her words on your ribs, on your lungs. You smile to stave off the tears, tell your own truth. Watch the falling, the crumbling and absolute collapse in her eyes as her dreams, her vision of the world shifts and shakes and absolutely implodes. You can see the defeat in her shoulders, see the tears she desperately tries to hide with a sigh of disbelief.
You hate it. You hate yourself, hate everything that led you both to this place, this impossible impasse. You can't stand to see it. Can't stand to be the cause of it all- the cause of the shattered look in her ice blue eyes.
So, you run. You ghost a kiss upon her cheek and run as fast and as hard as you can. Focus on the future, on the now. Try not to get sucked into the hole that is the absence of her. You did this.
She did her share of breaking, of swinging and striking where it was good and painful but you'd dealt the final blow. San Francisco, a world, a country away.
Did you think she'd actually go with you? You'd like to think so but the voice inside you chides you so much when you close your eyes and try so much not to focus on it that you know it to be true. You were a coward and a tease and a fucking thief. So greedy and desperate for a taste, for a memory that you were willing to-
And now? Now you're on a plane trying not to remember, trying not to see her. And you utterly fucking fail.
The first weeks are harder than you'd ever admit to anyone who would ask. You avoid any contact with anyone outside of actual work. Indulge in meaningless flirtations to advance your scope of the job,your scope of the institution. You're well respected, well received and charming and everything you know that you should be.
It isn't enough.
When you go home, the bottle of bourbon is heavy in your palm and you drown down down down into until there is nothing but blissful silence. Anything to escape the ice blue orbs echoing your own devastation and memory.
The silence is shattered one morning, early. Too early for you to answer, too early for you to are. Thoughtless of any importance- probably Lisa on a bender that you have no interest in hearing about.
It isn't until later that you listen to the message, hear the stilted tone of her voice and the declarations of a woman desperate for solid ground, for any semblance of rhyme or reason. She doesn't get the little girl, doesn't get to be the person she wanted to be. And you're broken for her. The tears you never allowed yourself to shed before are thick in your throat and nostrils and it's all you can do to sink to the ground and draw your knees up to your chest and just breathe through your empathy at Gail's loss.
The morning finds your wallet six hundred dollars shy and yourself on a plane back to Toronto. You have the clothes on your back and a small purse and that's it. You were greeted by the stewardess at the airport with a curious but sincere smile but handed her your ticket and passport without hesitation, without emotion, your mind churning, a plan formulating. You pulled out your phone as you found your seat, made a quick phone call with desperation in your voice. But it worked and the small dissipation of the consuming weight upon your shoulders is gone for a bit.
The plane ride feels longer this time, the beating of your heart more pronounced and aching. You were so close but so far and you had no idea what would happen or what you would say and you feel like maybe you should because so much of you and her is wrapped up in half assed plans and passionate embraces but goddammit this is all so jarring and sudden that you can't help but throw yourself in this with wild abandon and a wide open gaping transparency, a rash and precarious professing of pure devotion.
The plane touches down and your make no qualms about pushing into the front of every line you encounter. No time for pleasantries and small talk. You are so polite under usual circumstances but for the love of God you had somewhere you fucking needed to be.
You make an impulsive purchase at the airport and tell the clerk to keep the change even as you refuse a bag or a box for the item that feels like a million fucking pounds weighing down the palm of your hand. You swallow against the cotton of your throat and press on, the resolve electric in your pulsing veins. The white gold band scorches a deep imprint into your hand, makes it throb. You ignore the pain, smile in spite of it. Hail a cab with the hand, laugh and don't care about your apparent mania. Calculated, driven Holly chasing the spit fire and ever evolving woman she tried so goddamn hard not to fall for.
The cab ride is short, your promise of a generous tip upon prompt arrival met with enthusiasm, and soon you're standing in front of a place that you never wanted to return to. This is the point in which you exchange smiles and old relationships and pleasantries in your pursuit of information. False promises of catching up, of drinks and dinners and lunches forgotten as you begin your search anew.
Traci's look of surprise is almost enough to break your resolve but you think she knows the state in which you've worked yourself into because she utters only one word to you before you're tearing out of the station to the bar you hated with almost as much fervor as your previous location. You flashed your I.D. with a barely restrained snarl at the flirty tone of the bouncer, snatch the license with impatient hands.
So focused are you that you don't notice the object of your desire mere feet from you, head bowed with shaking shoulders, a drink sitting empty in front of her. You're warped back to a simpler time when her eye were shining and her hair was clogging the drain of your bathtub. The air is sucked out of the room, the lights are no longer there and the weight of the metal in your palm multiples and begins to the pull. To the person it knows in must belong to.
There is no memory of the journey to her. No memory of your voice, even and calm despite your rogue and maddening heart, as it chased after hers as she brokenly asked for your drink of choice.
The Penny did make one hell of a Jack and Coke, after all.
You keep your gaze forward even as you see her face snap to your in your peripheral. You're a coward but you want to see, want to know- want to know how she's going to see you, how she's going to-
The hand clamps down goddamn hard on your forearm. The action yanks your eyes to hers and you're not prepared for the fierceness of her brow and the questions in the lines of her haggard face. The words, the coy tones of your voice fade into the heaviness of the confrontation and you shake your head and try to sputter the words out off willing but useless lips.
It's not long before you find your aching lungs and now marked arm basking in the chill of early spring Toronto air.
There are questions, accusations, angry words of spite and twice- spurned advances.
"You're too goddamn late and I am too broken. Go back home," she says.
Her tone is dismissive and her eyes are hard but her spine is drooping even before your eyes and the burning in your palm spurs your mouth wide open.
"I'm in love with you." You say to a broken and aching back that stills with the first syllable that falls out of your mouth.
"And I know I was a coward but I want another chance with you. I listened to your message and I wanted to be next you and wanted to tell you- wanted to tell you that I am so sorry because I should have been here with you and with Sophie and I know you're being strong but I want you to know that it's oaky that you're not and I want you to be with me when you're happy and sad and fucking livid because if I haven't told you before what I realized over the course of my five months in beautiful hell driven San Francisco well here it is: you're the love of my life and I want to build a life with you."
There's more. There's so much more that is loaded and ready on the tip of your tongue but something happens and brick is meeting the bones of your back and her own tongue has dipped in to the depths of your own to steal your last ditch declarations.
She tastes like beer and salt.
She tastes like lip stick, smeared and stop light red.
She tastes like the one thing that you know you will never tire of. The one thing that you'll crave when you first wake, the last thing you'll want to know before you surrender yourself to sleep.
She dips her head- once, twice, the force of her lips plying your own apart before breaking their grip when you roll your hips with the frenzy of her desire.
Another short cab ride, a blur of lips and finger tips and what you suspect is the taste of shocked and relieved and regretful tears upon your tongue and then the next thing you know, you're in a bedroom and the mattress is so soft and the voice that has long accompanied the memories that only come to you in your deepest slumber is heady in your ear. Her mouth is hot and wet and skating down your neck, the hot source of her arousal grinding into the cradle of your own hips.
"Fuck, Hol," she's panting in your ear and you wanted so much to talk and then maybe get down to this- this sort of devolved clawing and preface to primal need- but holy fuck she's so warm and her skin is so soft- softer still than you remember- and then her fingers are slipping between both of your bodies and the sound that tears out of her mouth when she's suddenly inside of you reminds you once more what you have come so close to losing so many times already- makes you file the feeling away, makes you remember how it feels to be once more in this woman's arms- begs you not to fuck it p ever again.
A stinging bite to your bare shoulder, a stuttered cruse upon your skin and then a stillness that you both dread and revere.
A moment ticks by. Another.
A shuddering breath that doesn't emanate from your own lips. A stilted and heavy laugh. And then a question.
"Hol- I love you too and everything but I have got to know. What the hell is in your hand? You know you're going to have that use that in a minute, right?"
Eighteen hours before, you'd been employed, a citizen of the United States, and single.
Eighteen hours later, you were suddenly free to do whatever you pleased, back in your native Canada, and up one fiancée.
You talked late into the night. Made some huge decisions and only yelled a little.
It is enough.
Eighteen months later and you're a published author (again) and your wife has a job she calls boring because she doesn't get shot at on the regular. You smile at the drawing on the fridge from the girl you have come to think of as your niece- the curve of the 'S' of her name getting neater and neater with each letter she sends you and your wife- before finding yourself drawn to sounds of swearing somewhere up the stairs of your spacious apartment.
You burst in the door, brow furrowed and mouth open when you see a sight that causes the worried words to dissolve into raucous laughter.
A cursing, red wife. A bulging belly and a tight top that is caught over blonde, now frizzled and spikey locks.
You bring your hands down her sides. At your touch she relaxes, lets the words die. Blue eyes reappear beneath downward sliding fabric. A button nose. A full lipped and gorgeous pout.
Your heart fills, your hand comes to rest on a distended stomach.
"It gets harder after you really pop, huh, babe? I feel like you were barely even pregnant yesterday."
You've said the wrong thing, apparently. Watch as blue eyes begin to storm grey. You kiss the venom away before it even begins to spill over.
"You are so beautiful," You whisper, "And I am so happy you decided- we decided- we were worth it. That we were done being stupid. I love you and our babies. And I love you. And did I mention you're beautiful?"
A grumble against your lips even as she melts into you, as much as her stomach will allow.
And this- this is the moment that you were always meant to have. This is the future you know you were always striving toward. You'd both gotten a little lost and a little hurt and things hadn't necessarily gone how you'd wanted them to but they went how you needed in the end and while it had been less than perfect, you thanked your lucky fucking stars every day that she was the end of your searching. The beginning and now the end of you.
For the rest of your life you get to prove day in and day out how much this woman means to you, how lucky you are to have her.
You never waste a minute of it again.