Silences
Summary: Ahern, C.: Where Rainbows End/Rosie Dunne. For forty-five years she has loved him and now it takes some time to get used to the fact that he is there. Or not. OneShot- Rosie, Alex.
Warning: Pure and utter fluff?
Set: Post-story, intended as epilogue.
Disclaimer: Rosie Dunne and Alex Stewart are characters by Cecilia Ahern. No copyright infringement intended.
A/N: Sept 2013. Part of a massive upload session. All the fics posted this month were started sometime this year and only finished recently, except this one. This one is old. Well, don't expect me to do this often. :)
I.
The guests would be up soon.
Alex had no real idea of how a hotel business worked but he guessed the guests would come down for breakfast at different times, sometimes together and sometimes one by one. Some would be grumpy (though he couldn't find a reason why someone should be, living here), some would be friendly and polite. Parents would scold their children. Children would shout and laugh. But no matter when and who would come, each one of them would be greeted by the smell of hot rolls, toast, bacon and tea or coffee.
She had it all under control.
Alex watched Rosie from the corner table in her big kitchen. It looked like a mix of a restaurant kitchen – stainless steel, white tiles, high shelves – and a simple, homely farmhouse kitchen. Light wood, red curtains, flowers on the table. So many different aspects he could see – and, with its own beauty. Just like Rosie.
She moved from one corner to the next gracefully and purposefully. No gesture seemed out of place. The trays she filled, the dishes she stacked – everything was done with such a sure, calm air he couldn't feel other than impressed. And she still seemed so young. There were white strands in her black hair, and wrinkles of laughter and sorrow around her eyes. But she moved like a young woman, smiled like a young woman – smiled the way he was used to. Smiled like his Rosie.
In the middle of filling the coffee machine, she turned around and looked at him. His heart stopped for a second and then started beating far too fast for his age. Get a grip, Doc.
"You want some coffee?"
"No, thanks."
He could sit here for hours without needing anything, just watching her in silence.
II.
"I'll tell her, of course. Thanks for calling. Take care, Josh. Say hi to Katie for me."
Putting down the phone, Alex sighed. Rosie pretended she hadn't been looking at him for the past minutes and turned away again.
"Everything fine over there?"
"Yeah. My lazy son finally – Thanks God! – seems to have decided on a path into adulthood. Might have something to do with that girlfriend of his. She seems to be a good influence."
"Tell him I said hello the next time you talk."
"Will do."
It wasn't as if she was purposely trying not to sit down next to him and talk to him, Rosie thought. She had a lot to do – she was busy seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Okay, maybe not twenty-four hours, but close. It was what her job required and she loved it.
"So what's it going to be tomorrow?" Alex asked and leaned back in the small kitchen corner. His ridiculously warm, brown eyes watched her over the vase of fresh flowers she put there every week. This week's choice were lupines. Blue ones.
"Three new arrivals, and the family is leaving. The kid will be sorry. He loved you."
"Yeah." Alex chuckled, a sound so warm she felt like weeping. "God, I've totally lost track of time. What day is it tomorrow?"
"Wednesday."
"I've already been here for more than a week now!"
He seemed dumb-struck. She looked at him sharply. "Do you have to go back?"
He shook his head. "No. I was just wondering. I've been here over a week and I…" He hesitated, his dark eyes mustering her. A shiver ran down her spine. Rosie Dunne. You're fifty years old.
"You?"
Say it, she begged him silently. He had suddenly been there and had spent a week in her hotel – okay, B&B – and so far, nothing had happened that she would have considered out of the ordinary. She could almost hear Ruby – Girl, grab him, it's what you wanted for all your life – but now he was here. Alex. Sitting in her kitchen, watching her work, helping her out, doing her accounting when she was too tired, talking, laughing, teasing and generally being his wonderful, Alex-y self. What was it she wanted? She couldn't say, just knew she wanted it.
"I never want to go home."
The warm feeling spread.
"Well, then it's simple: Stay here." Forever. "And if you've got nothing to do tomorrow, maybe you could prune the garden hedges?"
Leaning back into the chair, Alex pulled a face.
"I feel exploited."
Underneath the fake hurt she heard his humor. So she just shrugged, and hid her smile.
"You could also take care of the basement. The tools need reorganization."
Rosie turned back to cleaning up the last pieces in the kitchen before closing it down for the day. She could almost feel Alex's gaze boring into her shoulder blades. For a long while, neither of them said anything. Then, suddenly, he grabbed her wrist as she passed the kitchen table.
"Rosie."
His voice sent tingles all the way down her spine. "Thanks for letting me stay."
She shrugged again, trying to lighten his suddenly serious mood. "It's for entirely selfish reasons, believe me."
She realized the underlying meaning of her words too late and blushed like a teenager. Alex grinned, the mischievous sparkle back in his eyes.
Damn. I love him.
"In that case, I won't hesitate to be selfish, as well."
His lips were warm.
What the hell took you so long?!
III.
"Your parents would have loved this place."
Alex stared over the open terrace. The view extended until the sea shore. Rosie had really made this place perfect. The sun, the sky, the old mansion – and the woman standing on the stairs to the street, her long hair fastened into a loose pony-tail, her skirt billowing in the evening breeze.
When she looked back, she had tears in her eyes.
"Hey. Hey, Rosie."
Alex got up and went to wrap her in an embrace. He ignored his knees screaming in protest to the abuse they were suffering. Years and years of standing in the OP were taking their toll, he guessed.
"I'm fine," she mumbled. "It's just…" Sighting, she looked at the sky. "Mum and Dad would really have loved this."
He loved it, too. Out-of-season, autumn Friday, no guests, no visitors, no deliveries. Just him and Rosie. Having her all to himself was a treat. The sky was a vibrant orange, small clouds drifting over the horizon. The trees shone in every color of the red spectrum.
"Listen." He held his fingers to her lips. "Listen, Rosie."
She listened hard, then turned her head to regard him strangely. "What?"
"Can't you hear it?"
Both strained their ears again.
Alex heard the soft wind, and a few birds. A car driving past, somewhere far away. He listened so carefully he almost imagined hearing his own heart-beat. And Rosie's.
"What do you mean, Alex?" Rosie finally asked.
"I can hear them laugh," he told her. "I think they're happy."
"Ah." She leaned her head back onto his shoulder. "Well, of course they are. They're together, are they not."
"And you? Are you happy, Rosie?"
"What do you think?"
"I think that I've found a place where I can stop running."
She smiled up at him, a glorious smile.
"Welcome home."
IV.
"Quite some courtship, sister mine."
"Shut up, Steph."
"Mum always wanted you and Alex to get together. She would be so happy."
"Steph…"
"So is he staying?"
"Well, it has been six weeks and he has made no attempt whatsoever to flee my humble abode, so I guess I'll be stuck with him for quite some time."
"You sound happy."
"I am."
V.
"You are stuck with whom?"
Alex peeked right around the corner of the corridor and nearly gave her a heart attack. Rosie wasn't used to have other people in her part of the house. Steph, Pierre and the kids had stayed for some time, and Ruby, and Kev and Christine. But meeting Alex in the corridor still was new, felt new. New and exciting.
"Were you listening to my conversation?"
"Of course not!"
Lifting both hands in mock defeat, he grinned at her and Rosie felt her heart lurch to a painful stop. It started beating again only seconds later, both faster and louder. Quite an impact has the man.
"Someone downstairs is looking for you. Said something about a card game you had last year?"
"Coming."
He offered her a hand. She let him pull her up, her joints and muscles protesting loudly. Stretching her back, she blinked at him.
"Doctor, I'm feeling old. Is there something that will cure me?"
"Let's see… For one, you'd need some ingredients you won't be able to acquire legally. Second, a broomstick. Third, …"
Laughing, Rosie strode past him. "The second I have. I use it to silence annoying men."
"I'm hurt."
He watched her from the top floor, leaning against the banister of the staircase. She shouldn't look so beautiful. Now that he allowed himself to see his age-old friend with those eyes, he could easily accept the truth. She had always been beautiful – even when she was tired or angry with him or puking her guts out – but years had brought her a grace he had never seen in her before. A glow that seemed to radiate from inside of her. The way her eyes shone, the way she used her hands to demonstrate things, the way she moved – Alex had been married, and had been married twice. Yet he couldn't remember ever having just looked at his wives, just looked and seen. It was easy with Rosie. Maybe because he could see her multiple times over: the small kid that had kicked his shins right back when he kicked her, the teenager he had moaned over double math on Monday morning with, the young woman carrying a baby, the wife, the mother, the friend. Everyone was there in Rosie. It was like she hadn't lost pieces of herself over the years but had collected them instead, had put herself together over and over again without actually loosing whom she had been.
She came upstairs again ten minutes later and found him in exact the spot she had left him in.
"Alex?"
"Did anyone tell you how beautiful you are?"
She blushed. He loved it.
VI.
Dear Mum, dear Dad,
I keep picturing you together in the garden of the mansion. I don't know if I ever saw you there but the image is so real, so vivid I can't help it. And perhaps that's where you are right now, too. You used to tell me people who die go to heaven. As an adult, I can accept the truth told in the white lie. I'm sure you are together. And I'm sure you are here, with me.
Mum, Dad. More than anyone, you have taught me how to live. It's what parents do, I guess, and I hope Katie will be able to say the same about me one day. Whenever something happened I looked into your eyes, looked for your reactions. I know I messed up pretty badly some times. It's just the way I am – I only learn from the experience; and the worse the mistakes, the more I learned. I know now it must have been hard for you on some days. Thank you for letting me live my life, for letting me make my own experiences. My own mistakes, too, I realize how hard it must have been for you watching me stumble around without being able to help. Thank you for always being there. Thank you for having given birth to me.
Seven years since you died, Mum, and eight for Dad.
I wish you could see what I made of your mansion. Well, maybe you do see it. Remember I kept telling you that I felt like every once in a while I have to start my life over new? That I haven't reached a moment in which I could just lean back and be happy? You always said the day would eventually come. You were right, as always.
I love it here.
I love the way I can care for my guests, how I can work in my own little hotel, do what I love to do. I love the way the smell of the sea is on the wind every morning when I open the window. I love the way Katie still sends me postcards and letters and emails, even though she is travelling through the world living her own, adult, life. I love the way she will eventually marry Toby. I see it coming. Perhaps you'd like to give her a small, invisible heavenly shove in the right direction? If she's only a little bit like me she'll need some pushing. I don't want my daughter to wait for forty-five years to be with her true love. I love the way I wake up and look forward to doing my daily chores. I love the way Ruby visits me every three months, and how we sit and chat and laugh and even cry together, sometimes. And most of all I love it when I get up and see Alex, and remind myself that he is still here and won't leave.
It's silly. It seems like I'm more in love than ever, fifty-four and stupidly grinning at a man I've known for my entire life. We've went through so much. And it only seems to have made us stronger, seems to have forged this bond nobody can explain. Was it the same for you, too? I've seen what happened to you, Mum, when Dad died. I don't even want to imagine that. Now that he's here – Alex's finally here – I don't even want to think of what will happen. I am content to watch him sit in a corner in the living room and read, watch him talk to Josh and Theo on the phone or when he has fallen asleep in the hammock on the terrace.
When I was younger I used to think perfection of that kind must make a human being scared. I could lose him anytime. What would happen? What could happen? I guess it should scare me shitless. But perhaps I'm past this point. I just want him here. And he is, and I am, and I'm doing a job I love living in a house with the man I love (I know, who would ever have thought I could say that out loud?) and I'm absolutely content.
I am happy.
Wherever you are. Please take care of us. Of me and Alex, Katie and Toby, Steph and Pierre and kids, of Kev and Christine, even of Ruby and her gang. When you grew old you started to journey through the world. I guess I am happy with remaining here. I've got everything I need.
I love you both so much.
VII.
"Alex?"
"Yeah?"
"Let's go to the shore."
"Rosie – it's raining."
"I don't mind. Do you?"
"Well, I could tell you about the dangers of pneumonia at your age…"
"I have a pair of gum boots in your size, and someone left a rain-proof cape you can use. Towels are at the fire and the tea is on the stove."
"You're a crazy woman, Rosie Dunne."
"I know. That's why you love me."
"I guess I do."
"You bet. And that's why I love you."
Today more than yesterday, tomorrow more than today.