Author's Note: First I want to thank everyone who reviewed my last story. In my opinion it was the least realistic and not very true to the characters but I got support anyway and I'm really grateful for that, especially to those who review every time :)
This is, although arguably, the most angsty thing I have ever written. I am in the process of writing a fluffy . . . well, not fluffy, but light Lit oneshot and I found this on my database. This one is under 1200 words; the light Lit oneshot is still in the making and will be much longer so I decided to post this one now. I wrote it a long time ago and I have not revised or corrected it in anyway, because this was one of those writings. You know what I mean, the kind you bang out in half an hour and you don't want to detract or add anything for fear you'll destory the purity of the original? So this is it, raw and in its initial form. You might also notice I have never written like this before.
Reviews are nice ;)
Rating: High PG-13
Disclaimer: Eh.
Pena y las Ruinas
"Había sed y tiene hambre, y usted era la fruta.
Había pena y las ruinas, y usted era el milagro.
Es la hora de la salida. O abandonó uno."
(There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.
It is the hour of departure. O abandoned one.)
She sees how his eyes cloud over with guilt when he touches her. He tries to hide it but he can't (even though he's always been rather good at hiding).
Stop it, she tells him lowly, a warning more than anything else (what she means is: let me redeem you, let me take away our shame,, I need you, I want you, you are me, how did things turn out like this, can't-you-taste-it-can't-you-feel-it-don't-you-want-to-keep-it?').
He says nothing.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
She cries sometimes after her cashmere sweater is rebuttoned haphazardly over her aching chest. He pretends he can't hear her. He pretends he can't feel her tears smashing on his hand. This last part is hardest, so he stands up and walks over to the window.
He pulls on his shirt and lights a cigarette.
I love you, she whispers.
He would say it back, but he reveres her too much.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
We'll go away somewhere, he mutters in her ear as she sits in a chair at his desk, her head bowed, dark tips of her hair sweeping across his copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls. She asks where and he makes it up on the spot, all of it. Paris, Rome, Venice, fucking Singapore, for God's sake, Brazil, JapanHollandGermanyGreeceArgentinathemoonheaven . . .
When she gives him a ghost of a smile, there's a little pang in his chest and he realizes that he was wrong. He didn't make it up on the spot. He's been thinking about it for a long time (maybe forever?).
It's raining outside. He pulls her out of the chair and presses her against the window so that she is silhouetted in storm clouds and webbing ethereal promises. It's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen in his life, he thinks blandly as he wipes a tear off of her face with his thumb.
Her mascara smears.
- - - - - - - - - - -
He's not with her when the stick turns pink. She calls him, an absolute mess, her emotions crashing down a highway into a fifteen-car pile up. His hands start to shake. Don't move, he tells her. Don't move, don't think, don't don't don't, I'll be right there.
Her mother is gone when he climbs through her window. She's not crying anymore. Her eyes are soft and unstable on the edges and she reaches out for him, relying on what is very likely the most unreliable thing in her whole life. It's rather ironic.
I don't know what to do, she tells him. I have no idea what to do.
Just breathe, he says. Breathe, breathe, breathe (and don't ever stop).
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
She's asleep in his arms and their hands are twisted together, almost reminding him puzzle pieces. He looks at the pamphlet for Yale over her shoulder.
He has never hated himself quite like this.
I'm sorry, he whispers. It's nighttime and all he can see is the gleam of her hair. I didn't mean to, I'm sorry. He wishes he could be brave enough to say that when she wakes up.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
The next afternoon she solemnly says to him that it is time to tell her mother. He asks her to wait for a day, or maybe two. He's trying to figure some way out. She murmurs okay, but then she puts her hand to her abdomen over her Chilton sweatshirt and he realizes there is no way out.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I'll be with you when you tell Lorelai, he promises.
She nods, but they both know the truth, and when he bails, neither is surprised.
She calls him later. There is no inflection in her voice when she wonders if he could pick her up, please, if it wouldn't be too much trouble. He feels the bottom of his stomach drop out a little when she says that. His knuckles grip so tightly around The Fall that they turn white.
He notices how she says nothing when she walks off the front porch, pries open his trunk, and tosses an overstuffed suitcase into it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
He asks her where she wants to go. He doesn't bother going back to Luke's to get his things. He figures he has enough books in his backseat and CDs in his glove box.
She shrugs. I don't care, she answers.
He has never been out west.
Okay, she says.
It scares him like hell that she's not crying.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
They've gone 102.7 miles when she orders him to pull over. He does so, smoothly, on an unoccupied stretch of highway at one o'clock in the morning, right by a sign warning of deer crossing.
She climbs in the back seat and pulls him after her. He doesn't realize what's happening before she's unbuttoned his jeans. He does not argue (the worst has already happened). He grabs her fluttering hands in his shaking ones. Slow down, he whispers. Slow down.
She cries but she listens, and he makes love to her like they have eternity and she grasps onto him as a lifevest, instead of as a rock pulling her to the bottom of the ocean.
You mean this (and this and this and this), he wants to tell her. But he doesn't. Guilt is suffocating him with a greater rapidity than he thought it would.
Don't ever leave me, she demands very quietly, or maybe loudly, he can't tell, sounds are not reaching through the electron-splitting gauze wrapped around his head.
I won't, he says. I won't.
She smiles and he knows they both understand he's lying.
- - - - - - - - - -
He is many things but he is not stupid and he knows she is better off without him. He sends her back home on a train leaving from Laredo and he tries to kiss her as her tears blur the ink on her ticket but it hurts too much so he just holds her to him, pressed so close that their bodies are stapled together (there is no escape from the ashy dreams blowing across the station platform).
When will you come back? She asks, her middle starting to swell with his child. When are you going to come back?
He nearly cries for the first time in his life since he was seven.
She always knew the answer, anyway.
She leaves this farewell scene out of the stories she begins to tell their son five months later. Instead, she tangles her smallest finger in the baby's downy black hair and whispers in the middle of the night over and over again: It all broke apart into too many pieces, way too many pieces, and we couldn't, we couldn't.
Her Yale paraphernalia is in the closet.
She receives a copy of Kaddish in a brown envelope. She keeps it by her bed. By the time she's traced the return address, he is already gone.
- - - - - - - - - -
Fin.