Midnight
AUTHOR: Robbie (curlygurly87@hotmail.com)
DISCLAIMER: Remember how much we all cried when Carter and Abby finally tied the knot and how emotionally moved we were when all our fears about her difficult pregnancy culminated in the birth of that gorgeous little baby? No? Well, that's because I don't own Carter and Abby … yet.
ARCHIVE: Ask and ye shall receive.
SPOILERS: nope, nada.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: My pathetic take at a response to the LJ Mood challenges at the Carby Board based on the mood: hungry and an attempt to halteth mine writer's block. A foray into fuzz. Enjoy … R/R
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Hungry – adj. Experiencing a desire or need for food; extremely desirous; avid; characterized by or expressing hunger or craving.
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Midnight. A beam of the moon's light shines through the curtained window; a beacon of day's coming games. But now, in the dusky blackness, shadows bounce haplessly around the room, the walls their darkened playground.
She shivers, eyes darting lazily about the room, drinking in the aura of the moment – the thick silence, the eerie comfort. She pulls the comforter closer about her body, unconsciously drifting closer to the other source of warmth in the bed. She rests her head on his shoulder and his reciprocating movement is to unconsciously tighten his grip around her waist, pulling her even closer. She smiles sleepily, closing her eyes again.
It's the effortlessly pattern of sleeping habits they've developed that she loves. The random, passionate entanglement of limbs – of arms and legs and fingers and toes, of soft lingering breaths and sighs of slumbered delight – that is totally, utterly and inexplicably theirs. It's something they've fallen into, a pattern of life, a habit that was never started and can never be ended. It's the way they fit together like pieces of a long lost puzzle.
And in the morning, it's gone, as if the cheery rays of sun that replace the moon's plaintive strands coming through that crack in the curtained window somehow melt it all away. It's true that they wake up as one entity – unable to determine where one ends the other begins. But once they're awake, the daylight puts an entirely new spin on things.
At least, that's how it's been lately, she realizes. Because something lately has been off with them … with her? with him? She's not sure. And tonight, in the smooth darkness, thick whipped like chocolate pudding, dark and rich – she feels it festering in her stomach. It's a dull ache, a yearning for how things were before, and mourning for what they're falling into. But at the same time, an expectation, for she knows that things will get better. The little things that make their relationship unique and beautiful, those things are still there, and won't be leaving. Not until the end of time, and she's sure of it.
Maybe, she surmises, the feeling in her stomach isn't a dread for the morning, for the daylight and its implications. Just maybe, maybe it's something else. She opens her eyes as she feels a soft kiss, light as feather, along her hairline. She smiles.
"Say it," he murmurs, his voice almost lost in the tranquil ocean of the night.
"What?"
She's always loved the night – the calmness, the dark beauty. She feels as if he's violating the night by playing such games, games that should be reserved for day.
"What I always say first … you say it" His eyes sparkle and he repositions himself over her body, dropping languishing kisses along her breastbone.
She playfully rolls her eyes, her eyes beginning to match his sparkle, like little diamonds sprinkled across the vast expanse of sky.
"I'm hungry."
"What? Not that, Abbby …" he whispers nostalgically, his roaming lips moving to her ear. Her name is painfully long in his husky overtones, painfully explicit. She enjoys it.
"You have to admit that …" But her voice is abruptly halted by the feeling of his lips on hers, the explosion of color behind her closed eyes, the split second where her world ends and begins anew – pure bliss.
"So …" He wonders, pulling away slightly, just enough so their eyes can meet.
Her smile spreads like an explosion of warmth.
"I love you."
And he reciprocates again, like he always does, spreading a sloppy smile across his own face, like butter onto a slice of toast. Because he's her matching set, her partner in crime, her other half.
"Thought so."
Sometimes the body hurts so you know you're alive and you're hurting. Sometimes, a pain in your stomach is nothing more than the good old American yearning for food. But tonight, she's hungry for something else. It's that palpable crush of torn steel wreckage, mangled and distorted, waging a war within her. Hunger for him.
It's love.