The Affair
"You can never tell you're jealous until she smiles and says goodbye…"
I think, we'd start from the beginning, but there's so much to tell.
I'd like to start from the end—but it'd be backwards—and we'd end up distant…happy in ignorance. Unknowing…
She cries sometimes. At night…
I listen to his apology.
And then she laughs.
All is well.
As much as I hate this moment,
I'd hate myself more if it had never happened…
Her back is arched, eyes hot, steaming like boiling rain in the frozen backyard. His frozen backyard.
Her best friend's backyard…
Her green shorts and orange shirt are a startling contrast against the dull white film of white lacey snow. She gasps, holds her breath.
Does it all over again…
Her hands bury into the snow, and then tear at her hair. They reach to grasp the stars, her trembling fingers groping in a feeble attempt to shake the moon from its pedestal.
The remains of a silver cell phone lies where she had thrown it on the paved porch. It's barely attached screen flickering in an uninterrupted seizure of blue and black, some corners erupting into a frenzy of white noise. There is a message on it.
Unanswered….Untouched…
He watches as she screams, curses at the raven sky, his breath fogs the window. He wipes it.
Touches his lips…
And tries again to turn away…
He doesn't.
He never could before…
She's always liked him. Or at least as far as I would know, she's been attached to his hip. Same group, every time. I know.
I watched.
I still do. As she smiles and looks with those eyes, silver eyes freckled with shards of lilac. He never noticed before. Immersed in memories, the dead corpse's of the past.
But she waited.
Waited for him to reach an absolution that would never come. (But it did)
I hate him…
But I hate myself even more for wanting something I can never have.
Hate myself for hating someone that she loves so dearly.
Its funny how things happen… and what's even funnier, is that no matter what you do, you can't stop them from occurring…
You can only watch, as the credits slowly roll to an end.
It's a week later, and she sits slumped over on the breakfast table, her finger prodding the piece of toast. To the right…to the left… She mumbles snippets of curses and wild fantasy dreams under her breath. He sips black coffee. Sighs…
"Eat your breakfast…"
She doesn't look up, doesn't brush the bangs from her eyes.
Doesn't smile. Doesn't laugh.
Her mind is asleep in a body that wants to wake.
He frowns. 'Damn you…damn you Vincent…'
She mumbles again, head resting in the crook of her elbow. "Not hungry…"
(She's still wearing his shirt…)
But they'd never done anything. Nothing…
It is just his shirt. It is just another moment lost in ones that overpower the simplicity by miles. The simple white…
The phone rings, she jumps up, eyes widening, softening, and hardened like granite, soft again.
Humid and watery.
Glazed over with the bruised silver fog of the sea.
She answers. He waits.
(His chest hurts. Stabs into his throat.) He wonders if it would feel better if he just swallowed some glass.
She answers quietly into the phone.
Shouts… She brokenly whispers a stringing strangled thread of quiet misery.
He flinches. 'You bastard Vincent. You're killing her…'
The phone slams. She falls to the floor, on her knees, hands buried into the fabric of her shorts.
Chants—"stay away!" He tries to take her into his arms…
"Stay away! Just...Reeve, go!"
So he watches from the table, watching her twisting torso slowly curl in on itself. 'She's dying…'
He suppresses a tense shudder.
'And there's nothing I can do…
I'd like to say she healed and stayed with me forever…
But we'd all like to say things that we never could have the power to change.
I'd like to say that after that, everything was okay. And in ways, it was.
Just not the way I wanted it to be.
I've never really been selfish. Just enough to get my way through…
But with her…you have to understand. I was selfish.
But not so much as to take her for myself when clearly she belonged to someone else.
Jealous…
But not enough to take the one I loved away from the only thing that mattered to her.
Sometimes I wish I did.
But, how can anyone not die from the guilt afterwards?
That's probably why I'm not dead yet…
It's been five weeks.
She's better, sticking inside except for when it rains. Her skin is pale, she doesn't eat. He thinks resentfully. 'It's your entire damn fault she's like this, you bastard…'
But in ways, he supposes, she's better. She laughs. Sometimes it's real, but mostly just a sullen echo. A hollow attempt to make him feel like it isn't his fault.
She sits on the edge of his couch, flipping through a magazine with disinterest, while he pokes around in the kitchen, clanging pots, tapping forks.
Just to make some noise.
Just to get them away from what's hurting.
What never worked before, surely wouldn't work now. And it doesn't.
She stops and looks up when he sits next to her, unsure of where to put his hands. 'Hold hers…hold hers...'
But he can't.
Couldn't…
Wouldn't dare to do something a best friend shouldn't.
"So…Yuffie… Want some soup?"
She frowns, tosses the magazine carelessly to the ground, where it lays on the crème carpet like an arched wilting flower. "No…"
He holds up the remote. "T.V? We could watch your favorite…I know—"
"Reeve, I said no."
He almost gives up, almost walks away. But she's sitting there staring at the ground, and her lips are right there, right there, and her hands are clutching a blanket in a death grip. And he thinks, well, what the hell? What could be worse?
Could it?
What would it do?
He leans over, catches her headband in his palm, and lets it float down to her shoulders before edging in closer. "You need something, Yuffie…"
'Please let me be it…'
She frowns, and looks up. Her nose touches his.
"Well, what then?"
Their lips catch, one second, two seconds.
Ten…
And she flies from his hands like a bird from a cage, and on her way out, she grabs the phone and presses in a number.
He knows he's lost.
He'd lost long ago.
She's always been there it seems. She'd been a kid. A teenager. Sometimes I wish she'd never grown up. And then I take that back.
She's always been scrambling for a hold in the world, waiting for a chance to step into line. Make herself in a memory, even though she's right in front of everyone. Laughing and smiling.
Her coy voice and scrawny limbs, inching their way out of work, stealing prized possessions.
Stealing hearts.
I can't blame her though. Never could. Never will.
You can't help who you love. Can't help who breaks your heart. And you can't help but feel like you did something wrong even though you really didn't.
(Though, sometimes I think that I did…)
It didn't make a difference in the end. But, things usually don't.
Tome it did. But I was indifferent.
Invisible…
I can't complain. Never will.
I'm alive. I'm kicking. Fighting for my life.
I already fought for love. Won some. Lost more—more than I really expected, to be truthful.
But it's okay.
Always was.
Never needed anything more. (I wanted it. Needed it. It's the truth, I'm human.)I was never perfect. I wanted her for myself.
Just by the end, I figured, 'hell, if I'm going down, it's only right to let her go up…'
Sacrifice… Well, to be specific, it hurts.
But all I need is some morphine. All I need is her smile.
And for a moment in the rain, I feel like I've finally done something right in all my wrongs.
But the moment goes swiftly…
hree months later and the hour is late…
Almost past Midnight by now…
He thinks, while her shadow twists in a curling shadow of smoke against the gritty pavement, that it's too late for her to be out. Especially with him. She tails like a puppy behind him, her eyes squinting and freckled with lilac specks of adoration, yet he stares straight ahead, somber in the memories of a lost love.
He doesn't know why, why she bothers, why she stays by that mans side and continues to wound herself over someone lost in the years lost in a death long forgotten. He doesn't get it… so he follows. The air is hazy, dancing with the glitterati of women and their crystalline dresses draping over slender shoulders, their eyes dark and moist with the shadow of mineral powders. They glance and coo, all of them twin tittering birds on a wire, all replicas of the other. One dares to touch his shoulder; a dirty cigarette tucked in-between two thin mean lips, her voice a heavy drunken drawl while a string of gray dances into the air from her nose. She tilts her head, her lips a crooked line. He realizes that she is smiling. And, he can smell the rum from her breath, biting into the air in a sickly humid cloud.
"Hey sweetie…buy me a drink?"
He cringes and with a single shuffle of his feet, he walks away.
Instead, he follows him, watching as she scuttles closely behind, her lips turned into a cupcake worthy smile. –it's happy—he knows that much at least.
He doesn't know why.
Why he wastes so much…
He doesn't know.
Her smile, her laugh…
He can't let it go
It's her...
Love…
It's supposed to be like this: thinking about them all the time, always wanting to be near them, waiting until the man of their dreams leaves them in the dirt, and then propose. Rescue them from the dragon.
But it's not.
Sometimes love
Sometimes love is watching them grow. It's sitting there and talking, it's being their friend. And when they love another, it's smiling in the face of their lover and wishing them well in their relationship. It's standing off to the side, and wishing like hell that they'll be happy.
Sometimes when you love someone, it's best if you don't tell them that you do. Because then they'll break your heart, and ruin theirs.
Even more than it already is…
A year later, she smiles, her hand curled into his.
"All's well that ends well, right Reeve?"
He starts, barely managing a crisp and crooked smile as she and he climb into the back of a taxi.
"Yeah…" he laughs, "Have a good life, Vincent…" his voice clogs, eyes start to burn, tender as they flick over her face, "…Yuffie…"
She laughs weakly. He thinks desperately, trying to shake the Goosebumps from his skin. 'She knows… she knew…'
He won't say a word. She chuckles.
"It's not like we're…not like I'm leaving you forever you know. We'll be back before you know it."
He grins wolfishly. 'Just force it… she's happy.'
"Yeah, don't I know it Yuffie. Just await paperwork, loads of it, gargantuan heaps of it…You too Vincent."
'If she is. You are…'
Vincent tugs on her arm, motioning to a watch on his wrist.
"We should go…"
She laughs, smacking his arm playfully before wiggling her fingers. "Well, the impatient man beckons.
See you in a couple weeks Reeve."
"Yeah see you."
The door slams.
Tires screech.
He silently waves goodbye.
'As long as she's happy…'
I'd like to think of loving her, being in love with her…
Caring for her...
I'd like to think of it as something more than friendship.
A secret affair… (I imagined us in one, many times. But the only affairs were the words in my head.)
But, a secret affair is the one you don't know you're in until it's over.
And then, it never really happened in the first place.
End
A/N
Well, people have convinced me. I joined the Viva La Reefie forum. They have this Christmas Contest that ends on the 31st, so I thought, 'Hey! I can write something in a night!' So I did. Go, join the fandom.
I was listening to this song: Sometime Around Midnight by The Airborne Toxic Event. So I had a teensie bit of angst to help me along. The theme of the contest was Jealousy, and everyone knows, Yuffie/Vincent/and Reeve? The perfect jealous angst ride.
It's not the best. Not the worst, but it's what you get on six cups of coffee, and two hours of sleep.
I adore this little love triangle thing going on though... I want to cry, it's so Sad and Great. (I'm tired, whew.)
Expect more stories to come, as always.
TMoh
Disclaimer: Blah, Blah, Blah. Oh? You don't speak Umpa Loompa? Just like I don't own it?