Mild M for the following, just in case...
"Because of Maude?" Edith had asked. And she had looked so beseeching while she waited for his answer. Yes would have been the easy way out, but it also would have been a lie.
Anthony shut the door, pulling Edith back into his home. He needed to tell her something, she wouldn't stand for silence any longer. Just what he was going to say, he wasn't yet sure of.
Looking down at her, all obstinacy and determination, Anthony felt his will crumbling. She was wearing little brown tweed trousers that showed her skinny ankles, with a cream blouse tucked in. It showed off her flat tummy, her small breasts, slender hips. Hints of youth still remained—the roundness of her face, the way her hands were soft and fleshy instead of bony and papery. He imagined those hands in his, on his chest, through his hair.
But this had to be a decision made with the head, not with the heart (or any other bit of his anatomy). And Anthony loathed that he was the one that had to make it. Why couldn't she have fallen for someone younger, better suited? Why did she have to make him fall for her in return?
Oh for god's sake, he groaned internally. I've damnwell fallen for the little thing.
Anthony walked into the lounge, not bothering with the lights, and dropped to one of the new armless chairs Edith said were 'perfect for the space'. What the hell had he been thinking, spending all this time with her, letting her into his home?
Edith followed, but still said nothing.
It wasn't about Maude, his reluctance to… do whatever it was Edith wanted. It really wasn't. It was about Edith, and the fact that she couldn't possibly know what she wants or needs. Anthony knew from their many conversations how lonely she was in her life, however short that life had been. And they did make each other happy. Anthony laughed, actually laughed, when he was around Edith. She made the place he slept into a real home.
She was perfection.
But he couldn't have her. Because in ten years, or five years, or five months she would wake up one morning to regret him. She would run a finger over his wrinkles, see the thinning of his hair, and lose interest. Or she would get bored with whatever little domestic life they formed.
He thought of Maude then, of the way she would ask him to take her dancing and then be annoyed when he was bad at it, or the way she would scold him for being too tired after a day of surgeries to do much beyond showering and wolfing down a sandwich.
One time, in particular, Anthony remembered sitting quietly in his den pouring over some old novel. He couldn't recall what he had been reading, or even why, but he had looked up to find Maude standing in the doorway watching him. It wasn't the way a wife watches her husband in fondness. That day Maude had borne an expression of absolute bewilderment and scorn, as if she couldn't figure out how she had been saddled with such a creature as Anthony.
When Anthony had asked what was wrong, Maude said "I can't believe I ever found you exciting." She'd turned and walked away, and after that day Anthony stopped expecting Maude to come to their bed, or even be home at reasonable hours. He just stopped expecting altogether.
Now, looking up at Edith, Anthony tried to imagine the same disdain tainting her features, and his heart broke at the thought.
He wouldn't steal time from her.
Maude had been a bit older than Edith when Anthony met her, and she still resented him for wasting her youth. What would Edith think of him if he took hers at twenty?
Edith sighed, pulling Anthony from his worrying. She was still waiting for him to speak.
"You've filled my rooms with trinkets, your smell is everywhere, I haven't slept in weeks…" he said, almost to himself. How would he learn to live without her? How would he undo the way he had come to rely on her? It was his mistake in the first place, to ever let her in.
Edith's face contorted, something between hurt and rage. "You asked me to do this. You asked me to help you. And I thought it was to help you move on. I thought all of this was some great sign of your rejoining the real world. Don't you dare act like I invaded."
"That's not what I meant to say," Anthony replied.
"Why don't you try saying what you do mean?" she snapped. "Just once, say what you mean."
"Edith," he breathed. He loved her, or he thought he could. But that didn't count for much in this situation. "I think you should go."
She shrank away then, her face falling. "I just need to know, Anthony—is this because you don't want me? Or because you think you shouldn't have me?"
Edith sounded so strong, so much stronger than he could ever hope to be. But for her sake, for her happiness, he would be firm in this at least.
"I don't want you," Anthony answered slowly, tasting the foulness of every word. He hardly recognized his own voice. His stomach turned, his heart withered. How could emotion physically hurt? Even when Maude left he hadn't felt it like this, all the way through, right down to his marrow. "Not, not in that way. I'm sorry."
Edith narrowed her eyes for a moment, as if she might see something more than the words coming from his mouth. Then she swallowed and nodded. "I'm sorry, Anthony. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."
"You didn't," he was quick to point out. "This isn't… You didn't."
"It is my fault," she said, finishing the sentence he hadn't. "I'm sorry. I'll go. I'll find my own way to work and such. You've been more than patient and generous, and I don't wish to trespass on your kindness any more than I already have."
"You weren't, you weren't trespassing, Edith. You were," he began.
"I was being helpful," she finished. "I know."
This time when Edith tried to leave, Anthony didn't stop her. He sat in the dark of the lounge and looked at all the new things, all the ways she had improved his life. She was mistaken, she had been helping him move on. Only now Anthony was doing the same for her, helping her get on with her life.
That night, Anthony didn't hear any music from her side of the wall. He didn't hear anything at all for that matter. The next day when his new mattress was delivered, he made the bed with the sort of solemnity the orderlies clean an operating room after a surgery has gone awry.
He had done the right thing, of that Anthony was certain. And he didn't care much for his own broken heart, he would live with it. What bothered him was how easily Edith had believed him, how quickly she had accepted that he simply wasn't interested in her.
It took the rest of the weekend and the remainder of his scotch to convince Anthony that Edith was likely relieved more than anything, that she would bounce back quickly and that she had probably already begun to forget about him.
Monday was hell for Anthony. A tedious commute with only his hangover for company, he found himself as terrified of bumping into Edith as he was disappointed that he hadn't. He kept mostly to his office that week, except for the surgeries already on his schedule. Between working in the same building and living next door to one another, Anthony assumed they would run into each other, but he didn't see Edith for weeks.
He was miserable.
After a month Anthony stopped using the den, as it was the room in his house that was most Edith's. The lounge followed after that, and eventually he pared his life down to the microwave in the kitchen and his bedroom. Books piled up on the end tables and floor around his bed. Clothes never made it out of the bags the laundry service brought them in. Worst of all, empty tumblers from his nightcaps (which grew more frequent) laid on the floor against the wall he shared with Edith. Because every night he would sit against the wall (like a bloody madman) and listen for any hint of her.
Drawers closing, the occasional thump (likely from a dropped book), the usual coming and going of life was all he heard. Never music, never their music.
It was nearly two months into this awful new existence when Anthony saw Edith for the first time. He figured out she had been keeping a new schedule to avoid seeing him in passing, but today her schedule failed her.
He had finished early with a department meeting and decided to get a quick meal in before his rounds and afternoon consultations. He was just picking a table, sandwich and coffee in hand, when he spotted her.
Across the cafeteria Edith was sitting across from her boss, smiling softly into her tea. The man-her boss, whatever his name was—was apparently saying something funny. Then he reached out, the bastard, and touched Edith's forearm. Anthony felt something like rage bubble up inside him. And in that moment Edith looked up and caught him staring.
She pulled away from her companion without a word and stood. Anthony didn't even have time to react as she was already marching toward him, calm but determined. Edith didn't speak to him, she hardly even slowed down, but she tugged on his arm as she passed, pulling him behind her down the hall after discarding his uneaten meal herself.
He didn't dare speak. Not when she so clearly had something to say. Tightlipped and red in the cheeks, Edith pushed Anthony into a nearby supply closet and slammed the door shut.
"What is your problem?" she asked. Her voice was quiet but firm, her brow bent in anger.
"I don't have a problem," Anthony answered automatically. He tried to back away from her, but ended up just bumping into a sturdy set of shelves instead. Edith took a step closer, and even a foot shorter she intimidated the hell out of him. He wouldn't ever think of her as Little Edith again.
"I know you too well, Anthony. And I know that stupid, constipated frown you get when you're unhappy. It's not your pretend frown, it's the real one. You don't get to be unhappy about me."
"I just don't like that Mitchel fellow you're always spending time with."
Edith's eyes flashed with a kind of ire Anthony had forgotten women could possess. It was beautiful. And terrifying. "It's Michael and he's my boss and you don't get to make those kinds of judgments anyway."
"He wants to be more than your boss, any idiot can see that."
"Yes, well you're one idiot who isn't allowed to comment." Edith's hands were on her hips, cutting into the billowy cotton dress she wore. It was late April, and Anthony hadn't noticed the transition into Spring until he saw her bare legs for the first time. White and slender and shapely.
When Anthony finally dragged his gaze back to Edith's eyes she was still looking at him with that same cunning, fiery expression. Only now her mouth was parted and her bosom was rising with each breath she took.
Anthony was lining up a whole litany of apologies and arguments and words of advice about why she should avoid men who looked at her the way Michael just had. But all of that went blank as they stared at each other.
And then they pounced.
There was no telling who captured who in such a small space. They were all limbs and lips and grunts as Edith leapt into Anthony's arms. They stumbled, first slamming his back against the shelf behind, then her back against the door when he took control.
Thinking was an impossibility, what with Edith's limbs squeezing him tightly and his tongue sweeping into her mouth. Anthony, who was so well practiced at self-control, had no idea what to do without it. His hands pressed Edith's chest to his, then groped lower to her backside and her thighs.
"Oh, Anth-ny… Missed you," she managed, fingers scratching at his scalp and sending those hot, silvery thrills all through him.
It had been so, so long for him. Since Maude left. But the relief he felt had less to do with his lack of contact and more to do with his recent lack of Edith. Anthony wouldn't have been able to stop this, even if he wanted.
Edith bucked against him with need, pressing her center against his belly, and then groaned in frustration. Pushing off the door, she somehow maneuvered Anthony down onto a nearby stepstool, straddling his lap immediately.
Boxes of rubber gloves and hermetically sealed instruments were tumbling around them as Anthony left Edith's red, swollen lips for her porcelain throat. She arched for him, pressing her core against his length—so hard now it was almost painful.
His green scrubs and boxer briefs were a thin barrier, failing to disguise much. Edith, likewise, was only a pair of cotton knickers away from his touch. The more she rubbed against him, simulating the thing they both wanted so badly, the less friction those cloth barriers caused. Anthony could feel her wet heat dampening all three layers.
"Oh, I," she managed before forcing her lips back to hers. Anthony, having lost all semblance of thought sometime in the hallway, reached out a hand to feel her breast through her dress. When that wasn't enough, he dipped in to feel it bare beneath her bra. Warm and small, he felt her pebbled nipple against his palm.
Edith responded by grinding harder and faster against him. Both their noises grew louder. The inside of her thighs squeezed the outside of his. Her fingers fisted in his hair and pulled it painfully, which of course only added to his pleasure.
"I'm coming," she whined against his ear, breath sultry and hot.
Oh, and she was. He could feel it. Her legs trembled, the wet got wetter, her whole body gripped him in a vice. She ground hard against him again, and he came too with a surprised and less than attractive, "Annh!"
When their little tremors finally subsided, and Edith's breathing slowed, she stood and stepped away from him. Anthony was pleased by her flushed skin, glistening with a little sheen of perspiration. He was less pleased by her somewhat contemptuous smirk. She was… triumphant almost.
Without another word, Edith pulled a set of scrubs from a shelf full of them marked "Long" and tossed them his way. "You don't want me?" she scoffed, one signature eyebrow raised.
She may as well have dropped an anvil on him.
Before he could respond she was out the door, leaving a winded Anthony in the supply closet alone, beleaguered, and sticky.
A/N: Thank you for continuing to read and review! I'm terribly at PMs and whatnot because I do most of this on my mobile and it's a bit cumbersome, but I hope you all know how truly wonderful your support is, and this community...
Always,
Eleanor
