Summary: Pearls are for tears.
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Lie to Me is not mine.
A/N: The original version of this story contains content that's probably unsuitable for this site. So, rather than just editing it out, I rewrote the part in question. However, I will probably post the original version at my AO3 account at some point – the link will be in my profile when I've uploaded it.
Pearls are for tears
Cultured pearls
The first time they met, she'd been wearing her grandmother's pearls. A neat, tight little collar of white beads that was a symbol of professionalism, order and sophistication. Something with grace and lustre only seen against the skin of the classiest women – Coco Chanel or the Queen. Although she still remembered the achingly painful moment in the hospital when her mother's mother had pressed their cold edges into her palm in fear of not living any longer to pass them on, the sentiment had not lingered on their flawless orbs for long. In spite of her grandfather's hard work to buy them, and the fatal fibrillation of her grandmother's heart that led them to her hand – she hated them. They were just another mask, a falsehood, a presentation of perfection and a paradigm that could never be attained. On her last day within those five famous walls, she'd broken the string with a clean, sharp tug and sent the tiny balls into a chaotic scatter along the polished floor of the corridor, a crashing clutter of opalescent atoms unable to bond with each other. In that home of order, she'd left chaos. Her next job would be bringing order to chaos.
Natural pearls
All too often, when he thought about the house they had built, and the feelings they'd shared, he saw himself as the negative and her as the positive. Not just as two opposites with a magnetic attraction that was impossible to deny, but mainly as his darkness corroding her light. In time, he realised this was not necessarily a bad thing. After all, every endless night was broken by an enlightening dawn. Two things that were different could blend and co-exist and form something formidable. When that tiny speck of dirt slid unbidden inside the multi-layered yet smooth oyster shell, it irritated and then blossomed, giving birth to the natural wonder of a freshwater pearl. Something smooth, colourful, hard, a beauty from a violence, a tangible drop of truth. That pearl was the badge they wore and it had been crafted by both of them – their contrasts.
Pearl anniversary
At the joint celebration for her aunt's 30th wedding anniversary and her parents' 25th, she'd smiled and admired the intricate decorations on the cake she'd made. Clusters of little silver balls were swirled with ivory ones laid on top of flawless white icing, crisp and flat. Hours had passed, drink had flowed and the streamers over the windows had turned to the barbed wire of a battlefield. The top of the cake had been misshapen from her father's fist, drunken knuckles dragged in an aggravated line. Her aunt's pearl earrings just seemed like tears rolling from her lobes, matching the watery streaks from the woman's powder-burn-smudged mascara. On the way back to the hotel, she'd told her husband that he should never buy her pearls. He'd kept that promise, to a degree. The telltale lone drop that bloomed from the end of his nose was another matter entirely – a damnation, a curse, a catalyst for all the tears that she could no longer even cry.
Mother-of-pearl
On Sundays when he was just a boy, his mum liked to take him to Petticoat Lane market. It was noisy and bustling and he hadn't really liked it at all – the greengrocers shouting about bananas and caulis just seemed angry, the sharp zigzags of the spines in the jellied eels being sold made him feel sick, and there were just too many people. The only saving grace was the occasional glimpse of a pearly king or queen all bedecked in black clothes dotted with mother-of-pearl buttons and reams of tiny white patterns. Those original and striking figures made him smile and laugh, the lead would disappear from his legs and his mum would laugh and smile back. A gentle ruffle of his hair would follow, before they made their way home. A few years before she'd died, he'd rustled up a few pounds in order to give her a pen that was decorated with mother-of-pearl. Twenty years later, when he'd noted the page in her diary where the colour of the writing had changed, where that pen's ink was vivid and bright and fresh, he'd pressed his knuckles into his eyes to hold in the tears.
Soft pearls
They'd both had enough of tears by the time they finally found the courage to break that final barrier of intimacy and let love and care be laid bare with touch and taste. Their public teamwork also became private, their skin and souls collided in dark and in light, the weight of secrecy lifted and gave them both the rarest peace. While she baked a cake for his daughter's 19th birthday, he buzzed about, hands wandering, smearing icing and accidentally spilling a bottle of gold and silver soft pearls that were meant for the top of the cake.
They were crushed underfoot as she dissolved into laughter, a sound with the promise of very few tears to come.