Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine and the only I profit I receive from writing about them is when Kate811 reviews my fics. The lyrics included at the beginning of each chapter belong to Sara Bareilles and her beautiful song, "Basket Case." I use them here with the utmost respect and worship for her haunting words and stunning voice.
Basket Case
Chapter 1
I don't want to talk about it to you
I'm not an open book that you can rifle through
First thing, he usually saw her from behind as he removed her coat. Based on that view, he could often determine what kind of day it would be. He knew he'd be safe on the days she wore longer skirts or some of her more ill-fitting pantsuits. The evening she'd arrived and he'd helped her remove her long black coat, revealing a figure-hugging strapless velvet gown, Niles knew he was in trouble.
On the day she'd arrived wearing a long black skirt and a short-sleeved blue blouse, he'd mistakenly thought it would be a normal day. Of course, in the house, things were decidedly not normal—Miss Fine being engaged to the French tutor and Mr. Sheffield frolicking around in a jealous rage—but he'd been lulled into a false sense of security that between he and CC, things would be tepid. Little would change. Niles was a very, very stupid man.
But there it was—her marble arms and her red lips and that silly French tutor. What a tutor needed such sculpted muscles for, Niles didn't know. He'd been snooping near the back door, the scent of garbage and plastic recyclables in his nose, pretending to wash the door's window in case anyone noticed him standing there. He wasted half a bottle of Windex.
But then the man's lips were traveling up those arms whose elegance he couldn't possibly have appreciated enough and Niles kept spraying the window cleaner over and over, his jaw dropped, his eyes wide.
Then—and here's what perhaps bothered him the most—CC held up her other arm. He could have lied and told himself that what bothered him was that she'd consented to this flirtation from a man whose fiancée she'd known, if not liked, for three years. But Niles had no delusions about how CC felt towards Fran or about the nature of her new engagement.
Then CC held her hand up to her chest, her posture rigid in offense, and then she'd kissed the man. Covered his cheeks with her palms, similar to how she'd kissed him several months ago.
Niles was ashamed to feel betrayed and he was especially angry to feel jealous.
Then all of this converged into confusion because he had no right to feel betrayed or jealous.
So he'd hurried into the kitchen before she could go after him the way she always chased after men who were completely wrong for her and teased CaCa about doing a no-no. Then he tricked her into telling Maxwell, understanding how that situation would play out and never for a second believing that he'd actually tricked her. She was smarter than that.
After that, though, Niles could no longer predict what his day would be like with any accuracy.
Now, whatever she wore and however she looked and however she treated him, he reacted the same way.
He'd grin like a moron.
Sometimes he'd get lucky and leave the office or kitchen before it erupted, but erupt it always did. And if it had just been this, Niles knew he'd have been able to deal with it. But it was everything else that came along with it. She still irritated him, he doubted she'd ever stop doing that, but now he became irrationally angry when she threw herself at Maxwell as she always did. Now, it hurt when she brushed past him as though he didn't exist. It downright pissed him off when she ignored him after a particularly witty zinger.
This was no way to live. He had accepted, a while ago, that he found CC a sexually attractive woman. Who wouldn't? (Aside from Maxwell Sheffield, a man even more stupid than Niles.) It was when contemplations of her beauty turned poetic that he realized how doomed he was. Her alabaster skin, her silky threads of gold (her hair), her body shaped like a guitar he wanted to spend all night strumming. Niles disgusted himself.
He'd allowed himself a few days to wallow in self-pity, slumping around the house in his old robe and eating cartons of Ben & Jerry's that he'd hidden from the Fine family. This didn't feel like long enough—for how could a few days possibly console him from the tragedy of falling for a woman who would never agree to be with him?—but he refused to give in. He knew himself, knew his tendency to pout and sink in on himself like a dying star, and forced the moodiness away.
He would be proactive. He would go out. He would get a girlfriend.