A/N: This is a different kind of story for me because I don't really like to write in the timeline of the show and this one is set in late season 1 or early season 2. I hope you like it. I still don't own my favorite TV show, but I did set my DVR to record the next season.
She couldn't look at herself in the mirror. Turning on the bathroom faucet, she dipped her hands into the cool water and carefully washed them. Her hair was a mess; she could feel it tangled about her face and shoulders. Hands still damp she patted down the wavy blonde strands then dried them quickly on a towel. She never once looked up into her reflection, sure if she did she would find the disgusting creature she felt she was. Tears stung; she willed them away with a few even breaths. It was like a ritual, a habit, these few private moments afterward, alone with the internal bitter struggle.
Glancing into the adjoining room, she saw Chuck was already dressed in sleep pants and a t-shirt, bent over the computer chair to turn down the music.
To drown out the noise.
She looked away as he turned around and she stepped toward the bed finding one of his Stanford shirts quickly. She put it on quickly and without a word. She could feel the heat in her cheeks. The familiar awful awkwardness descended like a bleak cloud over the room. It always amazed her how quickly the atmosphere could change between them. From fun and playful, to electric sexual tension, and at last to awkward guilty regret. The rollercoaster left her dizzy and disoriented her heart a swirl of anxious painful emotions. Her heart couldn't understand why, but her head understood all too well.
I love you.Her heart whispered bitterly, and he met her eyes in that instant, as though he had heard. His lips turned in what might have been a smile, but to her it was another wall, another mile in the sudden distance she has been trying to put between them. With all her soul, she wished that smile would reach his eyes, and that he would cross the room and touch her face and kiss her lips. The feeling was familiar, the whole miserable stupid situation was familiar, and it was the same every time. She hated it, hated it so bitterly she felt like punching Bryce Larkin, hitting him square in the stomach so that he might feel a tenth of the agony she had to silently bear every single day since the first time she and Chuck had kissed. Still… here she was, willingly wounding herself. It wasn't as if he forced these interactions on her. Could she really blame him? If anything, it was her imposing on his life.
The truth was she lived for those moments. Those moments on a mission where their eyes met before he took her, the way his vision clouded when he touched her. The feeling of his breath and lips on her neck and the sensation of his hand gripped tightly in hers. In those brief moments, she could pretend he was hers and she was his. That every dire wish of her heart had been granted and that this time would be different. This time she would actually listen to him tell her how much she meant to him, how she was everything he had ever wanted, and everything he could possibly need. That this time, that light wouldn't go out of his eyes, as she turned away, wracked suddenly by her own guilt and regret. He stepped toward her suddenly and her heart lurched, traitorous and hopefully.
Chuck opened the door of his bedroom and a gust of cool air washed into the room from the rest of the dark apartment. He stepped out and that hopeful butterfly died before it could even take flight. Every time the same silly hope, and every time the same broken disappointment. She wondered if there would come a day when it didn't stab like a dull knife in her chest, and then she wondered if she really wanted that day to come. Maybe that would mean she had truly lost a part of herself, that an important part of her soul had died or gone numb and was lost. She wished, as she often did, that she could stop this. That she could be strong enough to say how she really feels, that the touch of his hands or lips, as innocent as they may be, didn't rob her of every logical thought and distort reality. She wished in the aching part of herself that she had never ever met him, that she had never laid eyes on him, and that she had never gotten this mission.
"Do you want something to drink?" He called from the kitchen, and she could hear the sound of the fridge opening and the opening of water bottles.
"No... I'm fine." She called, voice a bit broken.
And what a lie that was. What a horrible ridiculous lie. She wasn't fine, she wasn't fine in the least, and she hadn't been in a long time.