Title: Number Twelve
Author: MelWil
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own them. I make no money.
Archive: Just let me know where.
Feedback: Is kalos - lina_wilson@hotmail.com
Summary: "She likes the way the water runs from the smooth surface"
Author's note: So I get this CD from Christine, and I owe her a number of stories. This story belongs to track 18: 'Rainy Days and Mondays' by The Carpenters.

~*~

She likes to sit in the dark while she was thinking. She has a seat, pulled close to the window, and she sit there in the dark. She watches cars pass by and streetlights come and go. She pulls a blanket from her bed and curls in the seat, thinking until her mind is exhausted and she has to fall asleep.

Some nights, like now, it is raining, and the wind blows rain drops onto her window. She likes the way the water runs from the smooth surface.

The doorbell is ringing - once, twice and another time for good luck - and she's reluctant to answer it. Only people with dour faces come to her door anymore. She's tired of dour, sour faces.

She's walking to the door, enjoying the way her bare feet shush over the carpet and tap on the tile floor. She doesn't have bare feet often enough, spends too much time cramming them into high heeled shoes.

Toby is standing at the door. His face is dour.

"Go away."

He shakes his head.

"You're a pain in the ass, Pokey."

He steps inside. "Yeah."

She has to turn a light on because Toby can't walk in the dark. "What are you doing here?"

He waves his hand like he is holding a cigar. "I couldn't leave you alone dwelling in . . . whatever the hell it is you're dwelling in."

She puts the kettle on. It's a comforting thing, putting the kettle on. "I'm not dwelling."

He raises his eyebrows. "Yeah?"

"I'm contemplating." Contemplating work, life, love. Love gained, love lost. Seems to be more love lost than gained.

"Contemplation?" He sits on the couch. She wonders if he remembers how many times they've screwed each other on that couch.

She thinks it's eleven times.

She wants to remember them all now, in surround sound, because they were happier times, or something. But Toby is talking again.

"What are you doing to yourself, CJ?"

She shakes her head, holding her arms out to him. "I don't know."

He holds her, shushing away the tears that she can't stop from falling.

She whispers in his ear.

The count become twelve.