Disclaimer:I don't own Gilmore Girls and no amount of wishing will make it so... sigh ...
Once a month.
Once a month is what he gets when the moon is burning bright in the night sky and the darkness covers their sins. He is not meant to have her in the sunlight. He is not meant to have her at all. She does not give apologies and he does not ask for them. Her piercing blue eyes tell him stories of long nights left alone, hands marring white skin, tears shed in darkness. The bruises that lay upon her skin are not spoken of. He pretends he does not see them and she pretends they are not there.
She fell asleep once. Only once. He stayed awake watching her chest rise and fall with rhythmic breathing. He reached out and traced her bruises with a single finger tip, wanting so badly to wash them all away. That was when he found the scar. One long, white line running across her stomach and he wondered what it was from. His finger was sliding across it when she woke. She did not say a word, simply reached out and grasped his hand in hers tightly, so tightly it almost hurt. Baby, was the single word she uttered before her eyes filled with tears that would not fall. That was the closest he ever got to telling her he knew.
He knew.
There are times she begs him to hurt her. She comes barging into his apartment like a hurricane, pouncing on him without even a hello. Those are the nights she looks up at him with pain-filled blue eyes and forces his hands to dig deep scratches in her back. Scratches that almost draw blood. He almost hates her when she does this. He hates himself for letting her make him.
She leaves scratches as well. Marks on his skin. Bruises on his heart.
Other nights he takes her painfully slow. He savors every moment, ever touch, every kiss. When she tries to quicken the pace he simply stops, laying on top of her until he is sure she will not fight the gentleness. He can see how much it hurts her in her eyes. He revels in her pain, enjoying that he can still hurt her this way. Deluding himself into believing that maybe she does still love him. A little. Even just a little.
He tells himself a little is enough.
She never stays the night. He's not sure why it bothers him because he knows how much harder it would be to give her up in the daylight. She leaves sometime between one and three when she thinks that he is asleep. He feels her lips on his forehead and the inevitable sigh that escapes every time. He hears the whispered "I love you" that should never have been spoken.
He dares not sleep when she is there, fearing it will be the last time.
He wants to hate her. He wants to feel that burning passionate hatred rise within him when his eyes find hers, but he can't. He can't hate her and it hurts. God, does it hurt. He will always love her and he will never have her. She would rather have a life of fear and fists, than have a life with him. He is doomed to forever be the "other man". That's how he came into her life, and apparently that is how he will go out of it. He does not think he really matters to her.
If only he knew...
Most nights she cries herself to sleep, pretending his arms are wrapped around her thin waist. She pictures dark, unruly hair and smoldering chocolate eyes. When hard fists collide with pale skin, she drifts away to another time and place when she was young and happy. Once she sighed his name in her sleep and spent the rest of the week in the local hospital.
She no longer falls asleep first.
She remembers ice cream in cones. The only way to eat ice cream. She thinks of Howl and "Dodger". Days spent simply sitting with each other on "their" bridge reading books, the scratch of his pencil on paper the only sound made. She remembers kisses that melted her soul and healed her heart. She remembers him coming to her dorm room and she wishes she said yes, instead of no.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
She tells herself that she does not deserve him after all that she has done. Her brain has been so warped by scathing remarks and words of worthlessness that she does not think she deserves happiness...love. She steals snippets of time with him, if only to be near him again. She thinks he uses her for sex. She thinks he must be the same as all the others. Must be. Why else would he not try to save her. Is she not worth saving anymore?
She does not think of how it affects him.
She does not think he cares.
