Author's Note: So, despite it all, I consider the passed two chapters a little ... weak. Like, I was looking at the chapters before them, and the previous two or three had like 3,000 words, and the last two only had around 1200. This bothers me because ... pretty much it means I don't think I'm spending enough time describing things. So hopefully this one will make up for it. Thanks for reviewing! And, just for everyone's information, we're at the second to last chapter -- whoo! One more to go. I know, it's pretty sad ... but there's a sequel, so no worries!
Holding Onto Your Hand
Skittery didn't know they could make cloth so soft, or so white.
He couldn't even imagine sleeping in a bed like this night after night. Or, rather, he couldn't imagine ever waking up from a bed like this. Sleep was actual a rather plausible idea, especially right now, after being in that bath, making love to her. It made his stomach pang guiltily. This is how it should have been. In an enormous four poster, or in that big, porcelain tub. Just not up there, on that dirty roof, in that dirty end of town, outside ...
He looked down at her, lying on her stomach beside him, and winced. With a slow, gentle hand, he ran his fingers over the darkening spots on her shoulders and back. Her skin twitched uneasily, and she glanced up at him with those sweet, forgiving eyes. She reached over and took his hand in hers, entertwining her fingers with his.
"Don't worry about that."
Skittery cleared his throat uneasily. "I'm real sorry, just the same."
She smiled, propping herself up on one elbow and giving his hand a squeeze. He found himself smiling, too, but only for a moment. She was watching him, but he wasn't looking her in the eye. He knew he was making her nervous, and he wished he knew how to make her ... not. But at the same time, somebody had to be the realistic one, and for some odd, uncharacteristic reason, it wasn't Ursula. He pursed his lips, and waited. Maybe she wouldn't ask him. Maybe he'd overestimated how much she could see in his face.
"Skittery ... What's the matter?"
Maybe not.
He swallowed, and looked back at her with ungrounded determination. "I think I should go."
Her brow furrowed, and she pushed herself to a seat. "Why?"
Skittery snorted, and despite himself he could feel a tickling irritation growing within him. " 'Why?' Ursula, I don't know if you noticed, but I'm damn broke. And you's -- you's sleepin' on a ... a cloud or somethin'."
She glanced at the bed, her face still lit with confusion. "You could sleep here as well --"
It made him laugh out loud. "No, as a matter 'a fact. I can't sleep here. If I worked for the next hundred years, maybe I could sleep here. But I can't."
Ursula was staring into his eyes in a way he knew he could not look away from. She was searching for an answer, or honesty, or ... just something. Whatever it was, he would damn well let her look for it. Everything was so very silent, except for her breath ... And he wanted to take it back, suddenly. Appologize and beg her to forget it. He wanted to tell her he'd stay as long as she wanted -- that he'd never leave this room if she willed it so. But he couldn't talk -- couldn't even try to talk -- until she'd found whatever it was she needed from him.
Finally, she breathed a sigh.
"You want to end it," she murmured in a voice he thought was very brave. Skittery shook his head vigorously, clinging to her hand desperately. He opened his mouth to protest, but he could not find his words. He was gaping like an idiot, and she was just looking at him blankly -- what happened to the feeling in her eyes? -- waiting for something.
Skittery took a breath, but could find no words suitable for its use. He let out a defeated sigh, his fingers going lax against hers.
"I thought ..." He wished he could say it louder, but his throat felt as if it would collapse if he tried anything above a whisper. "I thought this was just goin' to be a thing, Ursula ... I thought ... What I'm sayin' is, this isn't just some stupid thing I'm doin' for the hell of it no more. This is real to me. And I can't ... I just can't do it if I know you ain't gonna be mine always. I can't do this if you's gonna be knittin' clothes for grandkids that ain't mine."
He let out a shaking breath, feeling as if everything in his heart had been poured out before her eyes like wine from a barrel. Skittery knew, that even if he were to stand in the middle of Madison Square Garden completely disrobed, that he would never feel so naked as he did just as he finished speaking. He watched her, hoping and holding out for ... something he was unaware of. And now he was the one waiting ... and it scared him that he could read nothing in her eyes. It frightened him worse than any other fear he had known that she could shield her emotions at the precise moment that he was allowing his to be completely revealed.
Skittery forced a nervous smile, feeling his fingers trembling in her hand. "Ursula, I love you."
She took in a quick little breath, glancing away from him of a sudden, and he felt something painful thud at the bottom of his stomach. Her eyes fleeted up to his a few short times. He would have given anything -- not that he had much to offer -- just to know what odd thoughts were whirling in her head. She swallowed and gripped his hand in a manner he found very despairing, and hoped she wasn't trying to reassure him with that grasp.
"Skittery --"
"LaFyette," he blurted, without really knowing why. "My name -- I mean my real one -- 's LaFyette."
A smile jerked over her lips for almost a second. "LaFyette, I care about you very much -- more than anything -- I've hardly survived these past two weeks; I honestly thought I was going to die --"
The corner of Skittery's mouth drooped with a frown. Why wasn't she ... ? Well, he understood all she was saying. It was a relief to know they had shared in their lonely tortures without each other -- that she was not cold to him. But her voice, her quick words and fleeting glances ...
"Ursula," he managed very slowly so as to paint the image of measure instead of the ruin he was feeling just about then, "do you love me?"
She forced another almost smile. "You're the greatest thing I've ever know, Sk-LaFyette. The best thing that's ever happened to me ..."
Skittery felt all of the muscles in his body go tense, his stomach knotting ... And then it wasn't nervousness any more, or hurt or even pain. No, singing loud and raucaus above all of it was an electric red anger that made him force his fingers from her hand and pull him from the bed. Why didn't she say it? Why wasn't she saying it? Wasn't that all dames wanted to hear in the first place? Every girl -- every single, worthless, unmemorable other girl before her had only begged him for his love -- and if not that, than the phantom of it, so that they could feel complete. And yet now -- with her; with the only one he'd ever felt so absolutely cadaverous without -- his heart was being primly, politely, with all etiquette and due respect, handed back to him. A hellish damnit burned through his spine, to the ends of his nerves and boiled his blood. Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit. Why did she not love him? Why? Was he so unworthy? Then why would she coax him into her bath? Was he just another available trinket to be used at her leisure like every other superfluous, frivolous, ridiculous thing in this room? Well damn her. She could go to hell and take that bath and these sheets and that roof and the moon and her eyes ...
No. He was mistaken, somehow. He must be. Taking a deep breath, he interrupted her babblings again:
"Do you love me?"
Ursula met his eyes, her bottom lip quivering uncertainly until she clamped down on it with her teeth. He could see tears in her eyes but was in no mood for them. There would be no appology, no sweetened words or sympathetic looks to serve as his antedote, save three simple syllables ...
"I don't believe in love."
His brow furrowed, and his mind went blank in the buzz of confusion swarming within his head. It took him several minutes to find sense enough to speak, and even then, the best he could combat with was a stuttered:
"Y-you're a liar."
She was breathing very quickly, but he didn't care. He didn't care if she was scared or hurt or frightened or oh so very sorry. There was only one thing that mattered; but one thing in this whole gray, dismal, rotting world that made a damned difference in the end, and here she was -- sitting in a snowy white bed with her hair drying in a halo of curls about her face, telling him she didn't "believe in" it.
Ursula was shaking her head, begging for the chance to testify, but Skittery had frozen his heart into cold apathy to keep from losing it in this dark and inglorious hour. He was standing, and she was staggering for the words. He was moving about the room, and the adjacent room, gathering his things methodically as she kept trying and trying to explain some ridiculous theory that didn't matter to him. Nothing mattered, if she didn't love him -- least of all her reason for not. He didn't know how he managed to get dressed, and in every bitter memory of that night, he could not explain how he reached the yard, or the street, or his cheap side of town. The only clinging remembrance, besides a distinctly corpse-like response from his innards, was that of the cool air outside, and how absolutely frigidly cold the breeze felt against his still-damp hair and head. He hated such an iciness -- brittle enough to sting but too weak to numb -- and he hated how frozen those first tears felt against his face.
They came like a rain -- like the gentle shower just before an endless, raging night of storms. He felt the foreign trickle sliding down his cheeks, building in his throat and choking him ... He wanted to be choked to death, but he wanted to scream, and the former fell sacrificially for the latter. He leaned against something hard and cold and sobbed, letting his lungs contract with whimpers because he didn't care if he was a man or not tonight. Tears were flooding down his face in a thousand different rivers, soaking his neck and seeping into his collar. He gasped and cried out, hearing his own breath echo loudly against the unsympathetic brick walls that surrounded him. His spine felt like it was rippling and he couldn't keep his hands steady when he tried to wipe the onslaught of tears from his face. He was begging the merciless sobs for breath ... and suddenly he was slamming his fist into the wall ... slamming both fists into the wall.
He heard a loud crunch but he beat the brick with his hands, every blow tearing a new stretch of skin; every little cut pouring a stream of blood from his knotty, veinous fists. He yelled something indistinguishable, another sob gripping his throat in its cruel fingers because none of it hurt so badly as her sweet, cowardly voice telling him faintly that she didn't believe in love.
Well maybe he hadn't, either. Maybe he'd thought it was just another stupid chastity belt broads slung across their waists to prevent or limit passage. Maybe he'd thought fellas who bogged themselves down with one woman for life had no balls, and maybe he'd thought the idea of being willing to give up the little he had to another undeserving person was illogical and stupid. Maybe he'd seen bitter wives and drunk husbands and neglected kids and thought reassuringly, "Thank God that'll never be me." And maybe all that was true.
But if love had never before existed -- if Juliet had just killed herself because the story was shit if she was alive, and if Antony dared Rome because he wanted to rule Egypt all to himself -- then Skittery knew it was existing tonight. The sweet whisperings, the long kisses, the passionate moments alone that the world raved and renowned -- he realized now was only half of love. Love was agony, and pain, and heartbreak. Love was the deepest, sharpest, hottest cut he'd ever felt. Love could not only exist with her -- but it lingered without her, as intense a feeling as any deep, mutual stare; as thrillingly breathtaking as any prolonged kiss.
And it suddenly occured to Skittery that being outside of her presence would not make that go away. Breaking his knuckles on a wall would not distract him from the stinging pain of loving her. There would be no end to it. Growing bitter at her memory was not hating her. A sharp affliction when thinking of her was not a feeling of resentment. This awful, eternal throbbing in his chest was here to stay, because he was without her, and in love.
Skittery didn't know what do to. The idea of wrapping his hands seemed rather ordinary in the midst of his subcharacter display. He'd been passionate, and prone to temper before, but never to this point. His entire head was buzzing, and he pretended he was crazy as he trudged mechanically towards the Lodging House, hearing his blood splatter on the gravel beneath his feet.