I have to give the title's influence its credit, so check out Junot Diaz's "This Is How You Lose Her" if you haven't read it. Seriously. Read it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Newsies, "This Is How You Lose Her," or Downton Abbey. Otherwise, I would not be on FanFiction.
This is how he loses her.
It's like holding flour in your hands. Open your fingers, perhaps if for a second, and it slips out. Close your fingers and you can still be holding the flour, but not all of it. When you separate your hands it will fall out completely, and all you're left with is a messy residue that takes effort to get off, and even then it's caked in the creases and folds of your hands.
He's left staring at the flour on his hands. It's disfiguring and a sad reminder of what was.
This is how he loses her.
Spot hears the rustle of sheets and feels the bed move not seconds afterwards, then her body is halfway on top of his. Her skin is soft and smooth, and he can't help but run his hands up her arms.
"Do you do thisoften," she asks.
"Never." It's the truth, and no one believes it.
She hums, and he finds his lip on hers. As she throws one leg over him, his bottom lip, which she tugs on gently, is caught between her teeth. She slides down his body, her lips leaving a trail and a ghost of that trail. He gasps as they come in contact with his navel, then keep traveling. Involuntarily, he moans when he feels her lips on the tip, and his hands wrap in her hair. Her tongue comes in contact, and he can't keep another moan, louder, from escaping.
It's all a tease. With that she comes back to his lips.
Almost sighing her name, he stops himself. He knows she wants him to beg, and he doesn't want to give her the satisfaction that begging will bring. He has a reputation to uphold. In any case, she wants him, he can feel how she's holding back. If he can hold out, she'll follow through. So he waits through her kisses, holding back himself.
Lower this time, she hums again, sinking down. He's won, he realizes, his hands move to her hips to help, and he hasn't given her the satisfaction of wanting her just as badly.
And this is how he loses her. He holds back from his desire to gain it, but in this very same way, he loses her.
It's late again. This time both are fully clothed, but his shirt it unbuttoned almost halfway. He bites gently on her neck, right where it meets the collarbone. But she doesn't expose it. She doesn't make it easier for him. Instead it's almost as if she wants it to be harder by leaning towards him. Their noses brush, and he pulls away to look her in the eye, but she won't let him.
"What's wrong," he asks. She doesn't answer, and he can't understand why. Why won't she let him do this? Why won't she answer his questions?
They fall asleep next to each other, side by side. Her back is pressed to his chest, and he breathes in the smell of the perfume on her hair, his arms around her waist.
In the morning he awakes to find her standing in front of the window, her back still do him. The rising sun shines on her, casting a pale glow around her form. Even though her back is to him, he can tell the robe she wears is open; its sheerness gives way to her figure, the soft contour of her body. He lies in bed watching her, the sheets wrapped around him to block out the cool morning.
This is how he loses her.
A block is pulled from the tower.
It's at one of her numerous parties. If he looks hard enough, he feels the bile welling up. There are too many people for Spot's taste, too many people in too rich clothing acting too fake.
One look at Lydia changes that. It's because of the way her deep red hair falls and frames her pale face, and the way her grey eyes light up when she gazes out at the crowd below her, genuinely smiling from her post above the stairs. She turns to him, still with that smile, and he feels his stomach flip, the bile receding.
He's eight feet tall when he escorts her down the stairs, and as she introduces him to more and more people, his height grows. He's the Lydia Loveless's escort, her date, and she's proud of that.
"Are you busy this week," she asks carelessly as they sip champagne in the drawing room. A fire is going to keep away the December chill.
"Not particularly," he answers, noticing how the flames make her hair look a bit more orange. He has the urge to touch her.
"Perhaps we could do something in Brooklyn."
All at once the fire dies. There's a dryness in the air. "I don't think that's a very good idea."
He gives her a cool look, one that's says the conversation is over. He watches as her face remains a wall, but behind her eyes he can see her emotions flickering.
Once upon a time, he'd begun chipping away at those hard walls. It was laborious and tiring, but, little by little, she'd started to wear down, and little by little, she'd done the same to him. But now it seems as though those blocks are being rebuilt. Slowly, but rebuilt nonetheless.
He doesn't want to say that he's lost her, because that implies that she's coming back, that they're going through a spat, or that he's simply misplaced her like a mucky old boot, not that she never has, nor ever will, come close to being a mucky old boot and that she's gone. Gone, gone, gone.
But, upon second thought, he realizes that 'lose' can have multiple meanings. A loss can be a failure to take advantage of an opportunity, and a mother can lose her son to sickness. Losing doesn't have to be temporary; in fact, the more he thinks about it, the more permanent it seems a loss is.
She emerges from her room in an emerald green dress that enhances her features nicely. His eyes rove over her body, and when they meet hers he grins approvingly. He takes her arm and they make their way downstairs to the party guests.
It's an hour, maybe two, later, when they meet. She's beautiful in her sophisticated atmosphere, relaxed and happy with a wine glass held daintily in her hand. Infected by her easiness, he has allowed himself to relax and have fun by her side, until she requests something out of him.
"Oh, please, Spot, just one dance?" She begs upon hearing the music, her eyes wide as she peers up at him. "Please?"
She looks like a child, fresh and innocent, and he is the stern, drab adult, the ones he'd always despised but couldn't help acting like. He imagines her pulling at the bottom of his coat in excited anticipation, ribbons in her hair and sparkling eyes, and him waving his hand with a half-assed, "Not now."
"I don't dance, Lydia." He maintains his resolve, fear getting a hold of him in a way no one will know. They bicker for a moment before she admits defeat but hides her pout.
He doesn't let her know that he's saving her from disappointment in him and social embarrassment. He doesn't know any of the dances they're doing, and he certainly couldn't perform to their level. If he relented, she would be so mortified that she'd never want to show her face in society again.
Then he appears, edging through the crowd to stand in front of them. His voice is suave in a non-unctuous way. "Lydia."
"Brent!" she exclaims when she sees him. He reaches for her hand and kisses its gloved surface. "Spot, this is my friend Brent Stippleman, the lawyer."
"How do you do?" Brent asks, politely acknowledging him. If Spot were a dog, his fur would be standing on end. He gives Spot an inadequate amount of time to reply. "Lydia, I couldn't help but notice you standing over here when this little trot came on, and I must request a dance."
"Oh, no, Brent, but thank y—" She tries to brush him off, shaking her hand, which he takes in his own.
"I insist," he says as he begins to pull away. With an eyebrow cocked, he adds, "Just one."
Spot feels her slipping from his grasp, and this is how he loses her, but he doesn't want to believe it. His hand slides down her arm, lower and lower until he doesn't even have hold of her fingers. He watches as she slips into the crowd with an apologetic look back at him.
If he reaches out, tries hard enough, he can catch her. Or he could suck it up, follow her onto the floor, and cut into the dance. He could be the knight in shining armour that saves the princess. To his dismay, he finds that her tower is too tall, and as much as he wants to, he just can't make it up the stairs. And that hurts him more than he could ever possibly admit.
When the last party guest leaves, their noisy automobile forever rambling down the lengthy drive, they retire to her room. Spot does everything in his power to make it the best. He's practically every place on her body, waiting until he can tell she can't stand it before actually setting to work. He's slow, kissing all that he can reach before she moves his mouth to her own, and from there he starts getting faster and faster.
Lydia's fingers grasp for a hold on his back. They settle in his hair briefly, but he causes her to hiss, and they lose their grip. Finally her back arches and she cries out, and Spot ignores her nails digging into his skin.
Later they lay facing each other, Spot's arms wrapped tightly around her waist, whispering for hours into the night. He feels like the block is being replaced, and he thinks that now he is winning.
But life isn't about winning, and looking back, he realizes that this is why he loses her.
He blinks open his eyes to find her coming out of the bathroom in the wee hours after one romp. She discards her robe in a pile on the floor, and when she crawls back into bed beside him, he can feel that her skin has been exposed to water, as if she'd bathed. Unbeknownst to her, she's studied, and he can see that her face, too, has been wet. But it was not been wet with the same liquid as her body.
He wraps his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close, face buried in his chest. "Spot," she murmurs, and it gives him a sickeningly awful pang in his stomach.
"Shh." He thinks she'll go on, and he waits for it, but she doesn't. And he doesn't press as to what is the trouble.
And this is yet another tear in the seam. It's a snowball rolling down a hill, and he doesn't know how to stop it or save the town below.
Once upon a time, they'd been happy.
He can remember them laughing and smiling and enjoying life simply because of the other's presence. He remembers the way she smiled, how she laughed, and he knowsthat an unhappy person could never do those things the way she had. He could tell that there was a difference between that Lydia, the beginning Lydia, and the ending Lydia.
Knuckles turning white in the process, he gives the railing a death-grip as he shuts his eyes. He wants to block out the feelings that the memories bring up, to go on and pretend like nothing has happened, nothing is wrong. He wants to be like the people on the street below who are continuing on their merry way.
Yet something in the back of his mind nags him that this is exactly how he lost her.
"It'll be my birthday in a few weeks," she says offhandedly one afternoon. They're sipping hot cider in the library and playing checkers. Spot loves checkers, and she makes a great opponent. A fire crackles behind her in the oversized fireplace.
"Yeah?" he answers, just as casually. He jumps one of her silver pieces with one of his gold ones, claiming it as his own and adding it to his slim pile.
She doesn't respond, instead opting to keep her face blank as she studies the board. She jumps one of his open pieces. Spot can't help but notice her expression, or rather, lack thereof, and thinks maybe he should take her to poker night.
Then he mentally chides himself for the thought; she wouldn't like playing poker with a group of dirty newsboys she's never even met before.
He moves, and she jumps him three times, eliciting a smirk in his direction. Spot, setting his jaw, cocks his head and smirks back. Game on, it tells her.
She's relatively quiet until they each only have two remaining kings left. Then she drops him another side comment. "It would be nice to go out sometime, don't you think?"
And then he understands what she wants, but he doesn't let her know.
An overwhelming assortment of trims, fabrics, boxes, and paper greet Spot as he enters the drawing room, and he startles. Lydia stands in the center of the room, her handmaid next to her with a pen and paper in hand. Judging from her slow movements and frequent sighs, he takes a shot in the dark that she's tired. She doesn't see him at first, and so he resolves to leaning against the doorframe, content to just watch her. When she finally turns, a distraught look on her face, she seems to relax ever so slightly and smiles.
"How long have you been standing here?" she asks, and he takes her hand to lead her out the door into the hall.
"Not long. What is all that?" He motions to the room.
Lydia offers a strained grin. A few strands of her red hair have fallen from their updo, and Spot tucks them behind her ear. "I'm leaving for the London season tomorrow. Mama says that if no good prospects show up by the end of this year's, it may be time to start looking in America."
He can notices the anxious way she looks at him, and all he can do is run a thumb over her hand. He doesn't think twice about his own hands, the way they might feel, worn and worked, sandpaper in comparison to her own. He tries to ignore the wish that her ticket will disappear, and Lydia won't go to London, where she'll be surrounded by rich men for a hundred days straight.
"Well," he says after a moment, "can I have something to remember you by?"
"Anything," she answers breathlessly as he pulls her closer. Her fingers just barely brush his face, and he aims to remain stoic, hiding the way it makes his stomach flutter.
He knows what she's expecting, but instead he simply leans down to kiss her, long and slow. Spot can tell she's caught off guard by the gentleness of his actions, the way she freezes and takes a moment to kiss back. But her lips begin to move in synchronization with his, sending electric tingles up and down his spine, and he catches her as she goes almost limp in his grip.
000
"Will you write?"
Lydia wrings her hat as if she's nervous, frowning slightly. Spot places his hands over her own to stop her while a train whistle blows in the background. People rush about them, but they barely register to him. He can only take in the girl in front of him, polished in her tawny traveling suit, the one with the crimson trim around the edges.
Her response is a smirk; he knows she understands it, that she can write all she wants but he will most likely not write back. So they stand in front of each other, and Spot watches the way her expression goes from wistful to something he doesn't want to name.
"My Lady," her maid calls, and the train whistle blows again. Somewhere down the line, a conductor shouts the time.
Lydia opens her mouth to say something, but Spot stops her with a kiss. Like the night before, Lydia freezes, but she doesn't melt into him this time. When they pull apart, Spot places her hat on her head and offers a smile. It almost fades as Lydia bites her lip, but he hides it by taking her hands and kissing her cheek.
He looks down at his hands. They're hard to see in the darkness from the fire escape; he doesn't need the light though. He can still feel where her soft fingertips left his, the way they slipped from his grasp, just like the night at the party. Except by then it was harder. It was as if he was trying to hold onto something that was no longer there.
He now understands the phrase 'slipping through fingers' now.
Lydia returns that August amid another newsboy-or at least a Manhattan-disaster: a few of Jack's boys had picked the wrong people to squabble with, and as a result were looking at a borough war. Spot is trying to figure out if it was important enough to lend his aid to Jack. Part of him says it is Jack's own stupid fault, to let him fix the mess he'd made; yet the other half says Jack is a good friend and friends stick together. Having sold out of his morning edition ealy, he wanders down to the harbor to think.
Yelling from a new arrival brings him out of his thoughts, and his sight falls onto the steamer. The gangplank lowers, and one by one people make their way onto dry land. Spot isn't paying too much attention to them until he saw a familiar face appear. Her eyes rove over the harbor, one black-gloved hand poised on the side of the ship, and she only rouses when her maid tapped her shoulder.
Spot upsets the sailor waiting to welcome help her off the gangplank. Lydia watches her footing as she is passed from sailor to sailor, and only at the bottom does she look up, into icy eyes that would have appeared to the world as mischievous. They would have given off the appearance of a scruffy, most likely orphaned, newsboy being smart by helping an obviously wealthy socialite off the ship.
He and Lydia know better.
Shock takes over her features, but it turns to amusement when Spot, never relinquishing her hand, took off his cap and bowed low to her. She bobs a curtsy in return.
"Welcome home," he says, smiling devilishly.
Her eyes scan over his features, and for once he feels self-conscious; he hasn't bathed before seeing her, and he is undoubtedly dirty. He probably has smudges on his face and dirt under his nails. His shirt hasn't been washed in a few wears, so stains littered the front, and mud caked on the bottom of his pants.
Lydia, on the other hand, is polished as usual, sporting a crisp plum traveling suit and small square hat atop her neat curls.
For some reason, she seems very grown up. Sickness washes over him, and he wonders what all had happened. Until he remembers the letters. The things that had been more addicting than any sin.
"A surprise welcoming party? For me?" She feigns modesty, touching her chest with a dainty gloved hand.
"Yeah, it was a surprise to everyone," he laughs.
It is like the ocean is still between them, the way they stand in front of each other and blink with thought, neither able to find the words to express their ideas. She says that they have much catching up to do, and he agrees.
He doesn't mention that he's read her letters, every single damned one, until he knows them practically word-for-word. He doesn't mention that he keeps them stored in a box under his bed, and that he would read them every night until the next one came. He doesn't mention how he would press them to his nose for their intoxicating smell, one he knew better than any other. He doesn't inquire as to if her grandmother ever found her eyeglasses, or if Cousin Robert ever proposed to the knight's daughter, or if the jockey she bet on won the derby.
This is how he loses her.
He knows he's lost when it happens, but he still tries, in vain, to make one final attempt. One final stand that he knows he will not win. It has escalated until he has no control, to the point that it is Goliath and he is David, and all he has are his papers, not miracle stones that will help him.
At first, they're just another faceless couple in a faceless city, albeit more well-dressed than most, and moving in a much calmer manner than the rest of the citizens in their relaxed, unhurried manner. She holds his arm at the elbow, and he carts her down the sidewalk, cane shining with every step. But he recognizes them, or her, at least: every contour of her body, every movement. They're engaged in a conversation, once that sickens Spot; her beautiful face is slack and bored-but no one would ever know-while he prattles on and on in oblivion.
From across the street, there comes a yell, and then another, and a group forms. He glances over briefly, not even silencing, but her attention from the scene doesn't waver. She watches with those grey eyes are too intelligent and watchful for a man so bland. Spot wonders how long it has been since she has seen something other than rose bushes, elaborate furniture, and fake people.
"Extra, extra!" Spot shouts when he regains his voice. He has a job to do. "United States on brink of war! President Roosevelt threatens South America!"
She doesn't notice when he stops, she's too concerned with the commotion across the street. She's dressed like she was that first Christmas, in a dark grey woolen coat and a black fur hat hiding her curls. It's all he can do not to smile at her red-tipped nose and kiss her. In his mind he can see it, that he would turn her gaze away from the angry crowd-which she watched hungrily, as if it was the most exciting thing she'd seen-and kiss her unexpectedly. She would remember everything and know everything and understand everything and it would all change and he would disappear forever as quickly as he'd come…
But he has a job to do.
Spot puts on a friendly smile, tipping his hat at the thief, and says cordially, "Care for a pape, sir?"
It's only when he fishes in his pocket for change that she turns to him. At first, the shock on her face shows, and she pales considerably. Spot watches her grip tighten on his arm like she's about to faint, and he wouldn't be surprised if she does. But she breathes heavily for a moment and almost composes herself.
"Keep the change," he says once Spot hands him his newspaper. Spot nods gratefully, all the while watching Lydia.
"You have quite the lovely lady there."
Lydia holds his gaze. He can't read all the thoughts going through her mind, but he knows they're there and that they're racing, and he hopes she can read his.
You don't deserve this.
I'm not happy.
I deserve this.
I'm sorry.
I love you.
I'm sorry I love you.
He nods, and begins to walk again, toting away Lydia. Her gaze lingers on him, almost to the point that she watches over her shoulder, but she turns away while he continues to stare. Passersby move through his line of vision, but he still sees how when the carriage door is opened for her at the end of the block that she casts one last look at him.
He sees it again. He sees her pause, hands poised on the sides of the carriage, and then the one foot that is on the step lowers. She turns and edges through the pedestrians, and he loses sight of her. When he finds her again, she'll be there, running to him. He'll scoop her up, and they'll kiss, and touch, and say everything that needs to be said but never was, and she'll be crying, and he'll wipe them away and tell her he loves her, and oh, oh God, this hurts...
Spot stands on the sidewalk and knows that this is really goodbye. This is how he loses her, by standing still and watching her keep going, lost in thought about the situation and how he is losing her and wallowing in his misery, not making an attempt to remedy it.