This is written in three parts, with a prologue, the body, and an epilogue. Set directly after 2x04, Honey. Focuses on Gillian's recovery after that horrific afternoon. Reviews are appreciated.
Disclaimer: Don't own it.
Prologue
"Can I sleep in your spare bedroom tonight?"
She nods, tries to mask the relief she feels. There are rules to this game that is her life, and she always, always plays by them. But that doesn't stop her from needing him, needing to feel that his heart still pounds beneath her fingertips.
They don't say much, because there aren't many words to explain away the fear that claws its way between them. He accepts the mug of tea she hands him with a smile of thanks. This is easier, this semblance of normalcy. The truth of what if smolders and burns at the edges of their shared universe, closer than before. She realizes suddenly that she has started, already, to think that way. This day has become the anchor for everything else. It is the peak of the mountain and everything behind it and everything after it will forevermore be compared to it. Before and after have taken on new meaning.
Cal is reading her unashamedly, but for once she is too tired to care. She simply wants to be close to him, wants to feel the life that pulses through him, just to remind herself that he absolutely has not left her.
She raises her eyes from the mug in her hands to his face and suddenly everything shifts ninety degrees. She doesn't know who moved first, or if it was simply a mutual effort, but it doesn't matter since his lips are crashing onto hers. There is desperation in the way their bodies connect: his hands on her hips, pulling her impossibly closer, her teeth nipping, tugging, pulling at every part of him she can reach. She whimpers against his mouth and they stumble down the hallway to her bedroom, his body knocking into hers and hers into the door in a chain reaction.
"Gill…"
Her name on his lips sounds the way moonlight should, whispery soft and silver in the darkness. She revels in his warmth, in the feeling of her body trapped beneath his. She doesn't realize she is crying until he begins to kiss the tears away.
There are images imprinted on the inside of her eyelids that she ignores. Flashes of memory, all the colors faded into blues and greens and grays, like a week-old bruise that has started to disappear but still hurts. Her father's hands, her mother's eyes, black and white, consequences and expectations and the knowledge that she will never, ever be enough…
Everyone lies. Everyone has secrets; she knows. This is something she witnesses every single day. It is one of the unspoken rules of the universe. She is no exception.
That may be her biggest secret of all.