A/N: I blame my 13yrold for this, for having this album on repeat all summer until all I could hear was Caskett! in the lyrics.
"How am I gonna be an optimist about this?"
She leaves him alone in the bedroom for a few seconds, cardboard boxes littering the stripped bare mattress, and he's been fine about it all, he really has, right up until the moment his fingers land on her dresser and he's pulling open the drawer.
His drawer. That she gave him for Valentines day.
It hits him square in the chest then, this roaring beast of emotion that claws at him, rearing its ugly head, forcing him to face the facts.
She's leaving.
He catches himself as he stumbles to a stop, his hand fisting against the dresser, the squeeze of pain in his knuckles a sharp contrast to the diluted, ferocious burn through his ribs.
He's going to miss her and she's leaving and he's helping her pack when all he wants to do is beg her to stay, go with her, something other than this - this forced separation that threads fear and worry and trepidation through his veins.
They have a plan, of course they do, weekends when she can, flights back and forth that he can take anytime now he's not locked down to her detectives schedule. He can write anywhere so it's not going to take much to be at her side, but for the next six weeks - as she undergoes intensive training - they are going to be apart and he's going to miss her.
They said it could be an extended training period depending on how good she is, what promise she shows. It could be three months if she's good enough - he laughed when she said that... if - of course she's good enough. That's not the part he's worried about. It's not her ability he's doubting.
Three months apart? The savage beast is clawing at his chest again.
The moment she steps foot on that plane he's going to miss her. He's missing her already and she's only in the next room.
They have the ring and promises and a future mapped out - if not in permanent marker then at least in watercolor - stretched out before them, fragile but full of possibility. An image that can blur and adapt as they move forward and as long as they do it together, as long as they survive the changes and find themselves drawn closer to each - not pushed further apart by time and distance - they should be fine.
They should be fine. But he can't help the worry.
They spent so much of their time together knocking down walls that he wonders if they've left their foundation a little unstable. But there is no way to know until the dust and rubble of this decision has settled around them. He hopes they come out of it stronger than before. He hopes that that's their fate because he can't contemplate a future without her.
He looks down at the drawer and pulls out the shirt he wore last night, tossing it into the box at the end of the bed that has his name on it. He's thought about this moment a million times before, envisioned a day when they would be boxing things up together. It was never like this in head.
He imagined laughter and teasing and his hands over all of her possessions - claiming and goading and bemoaning her inability to throw things away, the streak of sentimentality that sets his heart aflame.
He pictured shoulders jostling and hips bumping, stolen kisses and entwining their lives so tightly together that nothing could get between them. He imagined throwing her down on the bed and knocking all the carefully packed boxes on the floor, hearing her yell at him for the mess they would have to fix and getting her revenge by rolling them so she was above him staring down.
He closes his eyes and knows that he could get lost in the fantasy, in the feeling that nothing is different, that he's standing in her bedroom waiting for her to stroll in with a smile and an eye roll, like she did in the beginning. Like nothing has changed at all, but it has changed. And with a sharp pang in his heart he forces his eyes open and stares down at what seems like destruction laying out before him.
One side of the bed is hers, one his, their possessions becoming as divided as they themselves soon will be and each item that finds its way into a box thunders through with meaning, points out the obvious in ways he's not sure he can cope with anymore.
Separation.
He's hanging on by a papery thin thread and it wasn't until he opened the drawer that he even realized, that he forced himself to face the reality right in front of him.
She's leaving. And he's not.
He finds symbolism in everything, every object he touches in her home leaving an imprint on his skin, and, untangling her bathrobe from his on the back of her bathroom door makes him stop and stare at it for longer than it should. Tearing off little strips of his insides as he tries to ignore the pain and focus on the task at hand, all the while watching his fingers move and fumble as if they belong to someone else.
Separating his watch from the strap of her father's -somehow they always end up threaded together - pulling it from where it sits on her bedside cabinet, hurts more than he cares to admit. Maybe that's part of the problem.
He's not sure how to put a happy spin on this situation. He will follow her anywhere, support her in any choice she makes and he knows she understands that now, but he loves her and he will miss her. Miss the image he had of their future, even as a new one takes its place in his mind, and he's not sure how to be optimistic about that.
His fingers linger over the wood and he loses track of time, sensing her presence before he sees her, before he can lift his eyes from the near empty space that she gifted him with when they were new, full of smiles for the other and bursting with the need to be close.
He feels her enter the room and knows intrinsically when it hits her the way it hit him, when she's frozen, her body unmoving in the doorway as she watches him, her heart beating a little faster, aching a little more.
He knows if he turns to her she will be looking up at him with questions in her eyes that never make it to her lips. Shadows of hope lingering at the outer edge of her iris, a muted color - faded with time - and that she's pleading with him in silence for the words he doesn't have.
For his silver lining.
She's going to miss him too. Everything about her tells him it's true, he can read it on her face, in the reverent way she touches him.
In her smile.
Her expressions have always given away so much of what she has kept inside and right now - standing on opposite sides of her bedroom - with distance between them that only threatens to increase, he can read every little bit of it written on her skin.
She's going to miss him too and her heart breaks with it.
What is it she says? Say something reassuring? He has nothing. Just this deep yearning ache that screams how much being apart from her is tearing at him. Knowing he won't see her face every day or work alongside her, not waking up to her sleepy smile on the pillow next to him.
He's going to miss her coming home to him and kissing her goodbye in the morning, batting her hand away from their shared plate as he sneaks a bite of her pasta and the way she smacks at the back of his hand with the spatula when she's taking her time cooking.
He's going to miss bringing her coffee.
He opens his mouth, the jewelry box in his hand. The last thing he picks up to pack in her now empty bedroom, that he found buried at the bottom of her drawer, with his cuff-links still inside and the earrings he accidentally gifted to the Captain.
The soft tinkle of metal meeting like fills the room as he lifts it in his hand, but he doesn't speak, can't find the words and he shrugs, his hand falling to his side once more and his head dropping back down to the drawer.
How is he supposed to see the silver lining in this?
His eyes linger over the empty space and he doesn't hear her move, doesn't know she's any closer until the warmth of her meanders down his arm and her fingers slide in between his own.
Her head drops onto his shoulder, her hand on his chest curling up tight in the fabric of his shirt as she holds on.
"I'm taking it with me." Her fingers slide higher, touching at his chin, brushing over his jaw as she speaks. "The dresser. Your drawer." She sighs, pulling back to meet his eyes, "I'm taking it with me."
He nods, grateful for what she's trying to do, the squeeze of her fingers tightening when he unconsciously brushes the band of her engagement ring.
"I'm taking you with me." Her eyes - full of meaning and the words she still finds it so hard to set free - meet his own as she stares up, his hand falling from her grip when she turns and cradles his face, saying as much as she can with the few words she can bring herself to speak. "Six weeks." She whispers, unblinking.
"I know." He breathes, pulling her against him, stroking lightly over her cheek, "But I'm going to miss you."
He hears the hitch in her breath, the gasp of emotion leaving her chest before their lips meet, a little desperation spilling through the kiss. The soft sound she makes - that sob at the back of her throat that he can almost taste - telling him that she feels it too.
