Chapter 4
These Things
by Sisterdebmac
Author's Note:
This isn't really a songfic, but the title and theme were inspired by the Fuel song. I've been listening to them a lot lately. I think Adam would like Fuel. Their entire catalog is tragically romantic. Thanks to TeeJay for continuing to believe in this inadvertent series of vignettes. It has been fascinating.
Disclaimer:
They're not mine...blah blah blah. Barbara Hall...blah blah blah. CBS...blah blah blah.
Genre: Romance (with only a teensy bit of angst)
Rating: PG with minor, borderline R for extreme squeeage towards the end
"These Things"
by Fuel
I have this smile to hide me
And I have this cross to bear
I have your picture that still haunts me like your memory
These things have I
I have these words to lie to me
These stupid songs to share
I have these countless hours to fill the void you left me
These things have I
For all those things I've done
Let you down I apologize
But sorry's hard somehow
Seems so strange it'd be so easy now
But I've got this faith to blind me
And I've got these dreams we shared
And I have the fear that dreams are all I'll have that's
left to me
These things all these things
These things have I
These things all these things
There things have I
The call was panicked. She wasn't sure what to think when she first heard the extreme anxiety in his voice. "I can't do this, Jane," he said and it scared her.
Do what? Live without his dad? Deal with the aftermath? What? "Adam, what's wrong?" she gasped.
"I'm up to my ass in alligators over here. I started something and I can't figure out how to get through it."
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah, just... are you busy? Can you come help me?"
She looked at her watch. Eleven-thirty am. She wanted to spend her Saturday catching up on neglected errands and having a run on the brand new jogging and biking trail the city of Arcadia had just installed. But these things seemed meaningless when Adam obviously needed her. "Yeah, where are you?"
"At the house."
Already dressed for a casual summer afternoon, in shorts and a t-shirt, she slipped on her shoes and grabbed her tote. "I can be there in fifteen minutes. Do you need me to bring anything?"
"Lots of garbage bags."
When she got to Adam's house and knocked on the door, she heard only a muffled, "Come on in, Jane!" from somewhere deep inside and she got worried all over again. She half-expected to find him bloody on the floor. But when she opened the door, she found that her entry was blocked by... just about everything that belonged in the house. The place was tossed like it had been in a tornado.
"Adam?" Joan called surveying the scene.
He popped up from behind a chair piled with ratty winter coats and other junk from the living room closet. He had a stack of documents in his arms that began to slip when he stood. "Hey," he said brightly, smiling and happy to see her. As half the stack of papers he held dropped out from the middle and scattered, his cheer turned to plain old relief.
"What is going on in here?" she asked incredulously as she began to try to pick her way through the clutter into the house.
He let the rest of his load go and it dropped carelessly to the floor. "I know," he said, scratching his head. "I just wanted to do a little cleaning. You know, get rid of some stuff, but it kinda got outta hand."
"I can see that. How long have you been at this?"
"I started last night."
She couldn't see any rhyme or reason to any of it. "Wow, it's really... asymmetrical."
"Yeah, I don't do much cleaning. Or purging or whatever you wanna call it. Guess I'm not very good at it."
"Did you have some kind of plan? What are you trying to do?" Joan looked at him, curiously, questioningly.
"Just clear out some stuff. It didn't seem like it would be a big a deal at first. I just wanted to pick up around the living room. I was going to put some things in the closet for later, but when I opened it, man, it was already jammed full of all kinds of stuff. I hadn't looked in there in ages. I guess Dad would just stick things in there when he didn't know what else to do with them. I started to clean it out and it just... kept piling up on me. I went to get some garbage bags from the kitchen and we only had, like, two."
"So you sent up the Bat Signal?" Joan smirked at him.
"Yeah." He looked embarrassed when he admitted that. "I know it's kinda lame of me to ask you to help me clean my own house, but... there you go." He looked at her with that sweet, vulnerable look in his eyes, the one that used to make her heart melt. And still did.
She stepped over the last pile of stuff to stand by him. She touched his arm. "It's OK. I told you to call me if you needed anything. This counts."
He smiled down at her hand on his bare arm. He placed his hand over hers. His voice was soft as he told her, "Thanks. Again. Maybe if you feel like it tonight, we could go out. I'll take you someplace nice for dinner."
"I'd like that. But let's see if we can make some progress in here first." She reluctantly moved away from him and took a look around. She almost immediately noticed the painting Adam had dragged her out to the shed for after the wake. He had framed it and it was leaning against a wall, waiting to be hung. "Let's make sure we get that picture up. Or are you planning to rearrange all the furniture?" she asked.
He shook his head, glad that she remembered the painting. Hell, he was glad that he remembered at least that much from the whiskey-induced haze he was in that night. It started with seeing the painting in his mind's eye. It was always visual stuff that triggered memory for him. It took him about six hours of wondering why he was thinking of that painting to recall that he took Joan out there with him to retrieve it so he could hang it up for his dad. He was only sorry that it was too late for Carl to enjoy it.
She continued to assess the situation and consider how best to tackle the task at hand. "You already tried to move the furniture around, didn't you?"
"I started to, but there was stuff everywhere and I couldn't make up my mind where I wanted to put anything anyway." He turned and took his own long look around. Then he laughed. "Wow, I created chaos." He looked back at Joan, an odd mixture of glee and sadness in his eyes. "Didn't I?"
"Yeah, it's like a huge version of one of those sculptures you used to do," she said gently.
"You're a saint to put up with me, Jane," he whispered, his voice almost breaking.
He looked so sad, so small and helpless. It was all she could do to keep from crumbling into tears seeing him like that. "Hey, I used to think that about you all the time, back when we first started dating. I was nuts. And you were always so... sweet about it all."
He moved into her arms and she just held him. She ran a hand over his soft, wavy hair and squeezed him to her. He felt suddenly weak. And suddenly strong. He turned his face into her neck and drinking in the scent of her, he kissed her there.
The heat of his breath as it brushed across her throat and the soft, wet warmth of his lips threatened to make her thighs go up in flames. Could it really be that easy?
All she wanted was turn those last two inches, find his lips and devour them. To open herself to him finally. To drink him in. Instead, she kissed his temple tenderly and drew his face back to look in his eyes. "You keep that up and we're not going to get anything done."
"I like chaos. I can live in chaos," he teased as he released her from the embrace.
"No you don't and no you can't. Come on, let's get this place squared away. We can get back to our... conversation over dinner," she said, teasing him right back.
"Deal."
"So, we should probably start by breaking this room up into sections. Over by the door for stuff you want to throw out. Over here for things you might be able to donate. And back there in the dining room for things you want to keep---"
"Keep?" he interrupted.
"Yeah, anything you want to hang onto, we'll leave back there until you figure out where you're going to put it."
"I don't think I'm keeping much of anything from in here, Jane," he said matter-of-factly. There was no regret in his voice.
"Nothing?"
He shook his head somberly. "He sat in this room and watched his life pass him by. When he couldn't leave the house for months after mom died. When he hurt himself and couldn't work for two years. I'm sure he got totally sick of looking at this room. There's nothing I want to remember about it. These things, they're just things. Without him, they have no meaning. We might find a couple of things I want to keep. But most of it has to go." With a finality that Joan couldn't disagree with, he added, "If I'm gonna stay sane here, it's gotta go."
Yep, he was visually-oriented all right. When he looked at his dad's beat-up recliner, he saw the old man vegged out in front of the tube with a bag of chips in one hand and the remote in the other. It was the first thing he moved. He moved it all the way across the room and turned it away from view. "That thing," he pointed to it now, drawing Joan's attention, "let's donate that. Call somebody today. You know anybody?"
"I coordinate charities, Adam," she reminded him.
"Right," he nodded and he lifted a finger to point at Joan. "So there was a real reason I called you, not just a hysterical one. Cool."
She laughed. "I'll call AMVETS. They might be able to pick it up today if they have a truck in the area. So let's start the donation section over there with the chair."
"OK," he said, finally relaxing. She had a plan. Or she would concoct one from thin air. That made him feel immeasurably better. "I guess all the coats could go. He used to get a new winter coat every year, but he only ever seemed to wear one of them, the black one... Maybe I'll keep that one."
Joan smiled as she pulled the black one out of the pile and put it aside for Adam. He watched her and nodded to indicate that she'd found the right one. Then she began sorting the through the rest of the coats, piling them on the recliner. "Oh yeah, and for the stuff you just wanna toss, like all those old newspapers and everything, I know this great haul-away company that actually stops at a recycling center and a salvage yard before they go to the dump."
"Sounds great." Adam began to pile up the newspapers and magazines by the door in the to-be-trashed pile.
It surprised her that he talked a lot while they sorted his father's things. He told her stories, things he'd never told her before --- some sad things, some funny things, some weird things. It made her feel closer to him than she had since they were together in high school, when she often tried to take on the weight of all his burdens just to give him a moment's peace. And here she was, doing it again. And it felt so warmly, enticingly familiar.
Six hours and about thirty-seven different conversations later, the doorbell rang and Giorgio's Pizza delivered. Adam paid the man and walked back into the now clean, reorganized living room where Joan was finishing up setting the coffee table with plates, napkins, wine glasses and shakers for the salt and parmesan cheese, seeing how the dining table was stacked with papers and other items for Adam to still sort through.
"Oh my God, that smells incredible. I am so hungry," she said, taking a in great whiff of the pizza-scented air as Adam brought it to the table. The room now contained only the sofa and a couple of tables. The painting was hanging on the wall where Adam wanted it. Joan returned from the kitchen with a really decent bottle of red wine she found in a small rack over one of the cabinets. When she put it on the table, she noticed that Adam looked at it rather sheepishly.
"You don't have to have any," she told him. "But it's really good with pizza."
"I'll have a small glass."
He set the pizza box down and opened it. The steamy aroma suddenly filled the air. They sat on the floor on the same side of the table. Joan poured them each a generous glass of wine. He looked at the glass as if he was about to say it was too much, but a glint in Joan's eye --- maybe it was mischief --- changed his mind. Wow. She sat down and pulled a slice of the pizza onto her plate, picking at the stringy cheese to separate it from the rest of the pie. He did the same, watching her hungrily wolf the first bite of her slice.
"So, so good," she muttered through a mouthful.
He gulped. Damn, she was gorgeous. He wanted to tell her that, it was right there, at the tip of his tongue. But instead, he said, "I'm sorry we didn't get to go out tonight."
"Don't be silly. This is great."
He nodded in agreement. It was pretty great. It was just the two of them. They were tired but satisfied with their progress in the house. And they were very relaxed now that there was food and wine and no place to go. They ate quietly for a few minutes, both of them feeding a well-earned appetite. When they began to feel sated and slowed down, he found himself smiling at her, beaming at her.
"You really saved my bacon today," he told her.
The way he was looking at her took her breath away. "I... I'm glad I could do something to help a little."
"A little? Jane, look around you. Look at everything you did." He gestured around the room. "This, I can live with."
She smiled. "Good."
"How do you always do that?" he asked.
"What?"
"Cool things out. Make them... so much better." His gaze went from surveying the room to her face and landed on her amazing eyes, now shining with a curious happiness.
"I do?" she asked, meeting his gaze.
"Sure seems like it to me."
"You did most of the work, I just gave you some direction." She offered to pour another glass of wine for him after refilling her own.
He shook his head no. "I'd rather be sober."
"You think I'm trying to get you drunk?"
"No, I just... for the first time in a long time, I want to be present. In the moment, you know?"
"You do?"
"Yeah... you're here." He reached out for her hand where it rested on her thigh. He lifted her fingers with his own and wove them together.
"That sweet boy I used to know..." she sighed dramatically, "He's now such a sweet man." She pulled him up as she rose to her knees before him. She wrapped his arm around her waist and her hands went to his face.
Was it always coming to this? She searched his eyes for an answer. Why had his instinct told him that he needed her to sleep with him --- just sleep --- the night his father died? Why had she so happily agreed? Not just dutifully. She was completely content sharing her bed with him, holding him in her arms while he slept. Had some part of her always known that someday she would be free to love Adam the way she wanted to? Could it possibly be that time right now?
One sure way to find out.
She leaned in and kissed him. Deeply. Passionately. Unabashedly. It felt magnificent.
He devoured her kiss. And pulled her tight to him. He might've passed out if the electricity between them hadn't kept every inch of him firing away.
Her hands went into his hair and that was it. He knew it was real. She knew it was real. They plundered and teased each other's lips and mouths and they both knew there was no turning back. He shivered a little and it touched her in a way she had almost forgotten she could be touched by him. And she was being touched. She felt his right hand in the very lowest part of her back and she knew that he was aching, just as she was, for lower.
She let go of his hair, took hold of his belt loops and pulled him into her. "You can touch me," she breathed into his ear.
Instantly, he obeyed. He slid down a bit, one hand caressing her butt and one slipping in the other way to search her out through the soft, thin fabric of her cotton shorts. He bowed his head to kiss her left nipple through her t-shirt and sports bra.
Could this really be happening? His mind reeled. This was Jane. And she was finally going to be his. He was smack in the middle of a moment he had given up hoping for.
She pushed him down onto his back on the floor. He reached up and cupped her breasts very gently, reverently. She could feel him getting hard through his cargo shorts. And she could feel herself getting wet. She bucked against him with the sensation and ripped off her own shirt. He bit his lip and fought to control himself as he reached up again for those gorgeous breasts. She let him rub her nipples through the cottony sports bra with his thumbs and squeeze her till she feared she would explode, before she popped the clasp and let it fall away. As he lay there gasping at her beauty, she pulled his shirt up and over his head. Then she lay down on him and enjoyed the feeling of his skin against hers.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her to him. She reached down and unbuttoned his shorts. He slipped her shorts down and off. She reached inside his boxers and pushed them and the cargo shorts down and off. She immediately felt him, naked and ready against her thigh.
He felt her and he sighed and he knew she was ready too. "Oh, God, Jane," he sputtered.
"Adam. Condom. Now. Please," she rasped.
He couldn't believe it. He groaned and looked at her as he sobered briefly. "Upstairs."
She forcibly brought herself under control and smiled at him. "OK, then, let's go upstairs."