For 50lyricsfanfic at livejournal. Prompt #28. Lyric is in italics at the start. Thanks to Becs, Binx and Delga for their help with betaing, clearing stuff up and title problems. Becs, shurrrrup about the H thing. Or else. Bwaha. Erm... yes. Concrit is appreciated, praise is loved and Gary Sinise in a box will be worshipped forever.
Hugs & cookies! xxx
through long December nights, we talk
in words of rain or snow;
while you, through chattering teeth,
reply and curse us as you go.
It's dark but not dark on the rooftop of her apartment building and they sit with lukewarm coffee (it doesn't stay steaming for long; not in the cold December nights) and hotdogs from a street vendor and watch the city go by; flashing blue lights of NYPD squad cars and shrill beats of sirens, profane curses from cab drivers and angry blares of car horns alike.
Fine raindrops dance down like paper in the wind; they don't drop and they don't fall but they float, thrown around in the chilly night time wind of the city like a tiny boat in a huge ocean; ants in an ant farm, in unfamiliar surroundings they've no clue where they're going. He squints as he looks up.
He leans closer to her as he points out a constellation, or maybe that's a plane, he can't tell with the raindrops falling into his eyes and the light pollution that comes hand-in-hand with sitting on a rooftop in the middle of one of the world's most renowned business cities. She laughs as her eyes follow his pointed finger and she swats him playfully as she casually informs him that he's actually looking at a plane and if he were to look harder, he'd see that it's just moved on.
Just like she has, now he's gone back to Chicago, gotten married to a woman she's never met but already hates, hates with such a passion that she threw a photograph at the wall when she found out. It was their photograph, he held a glass of some sort of intoxicating liquid in his right hand while his left arm snaked around her waist – she held her drink in her left hand with her right arm across his shoulders and despite the huge amounts of alcohol already consumed that night they looked surprisingly alert.
She remembers that night like she remembers the rooftop - their rooftop. He'd once joked that they should name the building after them, the "Taylor-Bonasera Apartment Block". She'd cursed in Greek as she pulled her woollen coat around her to keep the cold night air out, before asking why it wouldn't be Bonasera-Taylor. She remembers his wicked chuckle, how he decided that age came first. She'd complained bitterly through chattering teeth about how the world was becoming so sexist.
That night would be their last night on the rooftop although at that point, they didn't know it. Both had resigned themselves to being single all their lives, she'd even commented on marrying him herself if they still retained their single status in ten years. But he was transferred back to Chicago, back home, only ten days later and although they spoke on the phone practically every night it wasn't the same as being bitter about the city up on a rooftop – their rooftop. The phone calls became fewer and far between, shorter and quieter as time went on and they got on with their own lives, work, away from the other and as much as he would hate to admit it he didn't miss her as much as he should – probably down to Claire, the woman he later named as the love of his life as they married in a quiet ceremony in a quiet church an hours drive out of the city. Stella didn't attend – she put in as much overtime as she could that week and tried to kid herself that she didn't care but she did, and she walked the twelve blocks home that night in negative temperatures, cursing in Greek and in Italian and in any language she could curse in. She cursed him and she cursed his new wife and she cursed herself; she cursed herself for being so goddamn stupid and needy and selfish, so selfish and not being happy for him, he has a life, a love, he's happy.
It snowed that night as she trudged home, the streets fell eerily quiet and she cursed the world.