A/N: A prompt from anonymous on Tumblr: Carol and Therese's first anniversary together. (I decided to go with the one-year anniversary of their moving in together... This is a semi-follow-up to the previous 'On Madison Avenue (Late March)' scene, but can also be read on its own.)


On Madison Avenue (Late March) II

On Madison Avenue, the year before, the sky had shone a strange shade of yellow, even once twilight had passed. Therese had stood looking out of the window with a sense of reverence that she could only remember from the Home. She felt that the world was very large all of a sudden, immeasurably large. She heard the sound of the seagulls in the sky, of the last delivery men on the street, of the whistling wind, and, somewhere behind her, of Carol turning off the tap in the bathroom. Finally, it was beginning to grow dark.

She turned and saw Carol's shadow cross the hall that stretched from the living room to the bedrooms. 'All yours,' Carol said in the silence.

Therese looked at her for a moment, not knowing what she meant. Then she realized Carol must have finished fixing the soap and towels for her to use. 'Thank you,' she answered, and wondered why she sounded so formal.

Carol walked away and into the bedroom, and the floor creaked under her bare feet. It seemed to Therese as if a yellow pool of light remained in the hall that she had left, a glimmer of the twilight that they had seen together. Therese walked, slowly, so that the boards would not creak, across the living room and into the hall, to the spot in which Carol had stood. She heard Carol switch on the light in the bedroom to her right. She glanced into the bathroom and saw the soap still bubbling in the drain. She looked over and saw Carol's reflection framed by the bedroom mirror, her hands poised to undo her dress.

'Can you help me with this?' Carol asked.

'Of course.'

In Carol's bedroom, the light glowed a gentler yellow, and Therese felt that it contained all the largeness of the world. A sweet, familiar smell hung in the air, clung close to Carol, and the zipper of Carol's dress slid down smoothly along the silk fabric. Without knowing what she did, Therese placed her hand against the skin underneath.

When she raised her eyes, Carol's lips were there, Carol's head tilted over her shoulder as though she were picking Therese out from her past. Their dresses shifted as they turned together, and Carol's mouth was warm, and Therese was surprised by the ease with which Carol stepped out of her dress, with which she slipped her arm around Therese's hips, with which she laughed when she saw the lipstick that covered Therese's cheeks, and the ease with which she rubbed it off again. Therese let her, and kissed the palms of her hands, her wrists.

On the bed, she helped Carol take off her stockings and kissed the side of her ankle, her calf, her knee. Carol tried to undo her dress, but Therese embraced her before she could finish. She found that she was, for some reason, crying. 'I'm sorry,' Carol said, pulling her up beside her, 'sorry, sorry,' like she had said when she had told her about the detective following them, nearly two months earlier. Carol's hands brushed away the tears.

'I've missed you,' Therese whispered. And Carol's hands touched her shorter hair, and unclasped her dress, and she had no memory of how or when she took it off, but only of Carol's fingers on her shoulders, the hush of Carol's mouth on her neck, only of pressing her face into Carol's waist, of feeling the softness of her skin, of her sigh, of feeling how the shimmer of this strange yellow light had enveloped them in their own whirling, sweeping storm.

Carol sat back down across from her, and Therese looked up, startled.

'What were you thinking about?' Carol asked.

She watched as Carol picked up the white napkin from the white table and smoothed it across her lap. 'You,' she said then.

'Oh, really? Care to share?'

Therese smiled faintly. 'Maybe later,' she said, and was interrupted by the waiter.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Carol smile, too – a private pinpoint in this large, loud, golden restaurant where they sat – and Therese felt that funny flicker of desire stir in the bottom of her heart. Later, hours later, Therese would share her mind with Carol. A year could change many things, but some, after all, remained the same.


A/N: Sorry for the long wait and sorry that this is a bit shorter than usual! A lot of original work came up, but I felt like the length suited this scene's sort of fleeting nature…regarding both the passage of time and its eternal looping back… Hope you enjoyed!

(Also, for keen viewers, a part of this piece somehow turned out to be a mirror image of the 'mirror scene' when C&T share their first kiss in the movie…

Also, for those who didn't hear, a storm swept over the UK, where I live, yesterday and brought dust from the Sahara with it, turning the sky yellowish-red in the middle of the day. Somehow that inspired me to fill in the gaps of the draft of this – I guess it made me think of Therese's 'desert' metaphor/the color of Carol's hair.)