'Past Dances and Future Tears:'
Passing Pressure Clouds


Rating: A big fat 'A:A' for Angst of the Abby kind. (Maybe a PG-15?)
Archive: Please?:)
Spoilers: Up through to present day season 7-ish.
Disclaimer: After many a talk with my lawyers I've resigned myself to the fact that these guys and girls aren't ever gonna be mine. I'm going to try and return them in a better state than that at which I found them in. It's the least I could do for them.
Author's Notes: Directly follows the 'Forgive and Forget?' storyline, so I'm gonna advise you read up on that one first.

I also did a little research into alcolholism and drug addictions for this one, but, not enough to earn me a degree, so apologies for any mistakes.

And this is for all you kind (and astute;-) people who sent me feedback, asking me for a sequel, I hope that this lives up to the last one.

Feedback's good for my karma (and your karma too;), so ; angelpixiedust@bolt.com

* * * *

"I'm never alone, I'm alone all the time"
-Bush

* * * *

Chicago looks a lot bigger in the dark.

Then again, most places do. The dark gives secluded corners a life they never get to live out during the day. White escaped lab mice become rats with piercing red eyes, laughter is amplified and stretched until it becomes blood-curdling screams. Everything looks threatening, every corner breeding some form of b-movie Monster No. Two. The alleyway next to that Italian diner with the Mexican Chef suddenly seems like the secret club den of every rapist, thief, and mutated kitten within a fifteen-mile radius. I quickly eye the other side of the street, but the old lady with the tin can trolley wraps her fingers around the handlebars possessively, and so I take my chances with the mutant kittens.

My head hurts from a lack of sleep. From a lack of radiating photons.

I remember when I was a kid, all the grown ups and 'Billy-The-Safety-Bunny' commercials reminding me that I should never talk to strangers, that little Abby should never talk to strange people.

And I always wondered, well, who do little Abby's talk to when the strangest person they know happened to give birth to them?

I sigh, and eye my surroundings again. Chicago's dark, and it's cold, and it's breeding a million different kinds of bitter looking evils, and I should be sleeping. Normal Abby's like me should be sleeping.

Should be.

I sigh, and I continue to run.

I'm too tempted.

I've had nights like these before. Every member of the Was A Drunk Club has had one. They say so right there in bold print in those little handbooks that they give to you when you sign in.

They give you handbooks on how average people respond to the average withdrawal symptoms and what the average person can expect to find happening within this average situation.

Handbooks to remind us that we're all broken and we need to be fixed.

And I've had broken nights like these before.

And I'm going to have broken nights like these for the rest of my life.

'There isn't a cure.'

'It's a lifelong thing.'

'Every day is a battle.'

And on and on and on, as though these Hallmark sayings will give us some kind of warm, fuzzy feeling of comfort as we read them. That on these, oh so normal nights, we're going to scan through the pages and feel comforted by the permanency of it all.

Carter and I could quote whole chapters from that manual.

He understands about the fling I had with it all. Addiction slept with him after it had been in my sheets. We don't discuss it, though. Lets us make pretend that that was all it was, a casual one-night stand. We were young, naïve, vulnerable. Taken in by its calming voice and whispered promises to be there whenever we woke up. Who needs to wake up alone?

We were stupid, we say. And its brutal betrayal is too freshly cut into our memories.

It hurts. Everything tingles with the memory. And I want.

God.

I want. I want to forget this. I want to forget everything. I don't want to have to keep soldiering through this all. I don't want to be brave, or strong or to be a fucking 'average' alcoholic.

I want to end the acidic Loneliness that's burning a cavity in my stomach.

'I want a fucking drink.'

I wonder which aisle that Hallmark card would be in.

And I'm breathing heavily, so I should slow down, and breathe, slowly, and deeply, and allow all the oxygen molecules to fuel my starved cells. Allow myself to recover.

But my cells don't want that.

They want over twenty-one, licensed and imported things.

Chicago's an empty place when the sun's radiation isn't there to wrap everything up in nice little blankets of normal.

And Loneliness may not be the greatest company, but she's always there.

And I keep running, I keep running, god, I have to keep running.

* * * *

Luka clears his throat dramatically.

I continue to let the foam build up on my teeth, the Minty Fresh Feeling tingling my tongue. He thinks that it's my fault that we're going to be late. That him kissing me back had nothing to do with him. That I was responsible for his mouth as he teased my neck with his lips.

I can hear another melodramatic cough. He's going for the Oscar.

"Jushgimmmmeeashec."

"What, Abby?"

I spit out the foamy paste, and tell him to "Gimme a sec."

He gives me another running commentary on the time. Like I have no idea that time goes forwards instead of backwards, and that, whilst my teeth are being given their morning wash, time is still passing us by.

Sighing, I spit out the alkaline solution, and rinse my mouth out with two handfuls of tap water.

He's now resorted to whistling bad show tunes to get my attention.

I ignore him, and quickly inspect myself in the mirror. The deep lines and black smudges beneath my eyes glare back at me spitefully from beneath the layers of foundation that I believed would make them fade back into a full night's worth of sleep.

Sighing, I drown my tired face in two more handfuls of water, dab it with a towel, and move out into the hall, where Luka's on his third rendition of 'Old king Cole', his eyes telling me in no uncertain terms to hurry, hurry, hurry as another two minutes have obviously been whittled away.

We're on borrowed time.

Shrugging on my coat, and pulling on my bag, I follow him out into the pastel colourings of the hallway, hesitating on the doorframe.

"You catch the weather report?"

"Rain. High-pressure clouds. Minus five degree Celsius in the morning, minus nine this evening."

I shrug my head into the direction of the umbrella stand, realizing that he actually has one of these things, and say, "You wanna play safe?"

He nods his head, with a small smile, and follows me out into the high-pressure clouded area of Chicago. The photons dazzle me, and I eye several corners of its streets nostalgically, searching for mutants and fanged rats.

I see only garbage cans and drunken people with bad hangovers bitching about the pressure clouds.

And my head hurts from the lack of sleep.

Luka tells me about his plans for the rest of the day whilst reading the Sports pages of the Chicago Something Or Other, as I let my head find warmth in his shoulder, as we hitch our daily ride in on the El.

I wonder where my mother is. I wonder if she's planning to come back down here to send me her love personally. She's not a singing telegram type of person.

I peer over Luka's shoulder to read today's horoscope.

Something about the passing of a storm. My chance to re-fuel. Nothing about cravings or temptations or crazy mothers with home addresses.

I lock hands with Luka as we step off the El and into County territory. He turns to face me suddenly.

"So how was your jog?"

I shrug at this break in conversation. "Nothing special."

"You came back home at six Abby." He says with a hint of something that I can't quite define in his voice.

Because of this I hesitate in my answer. "The Sears Tower is a lot further than you'd imagine." And climbing it is also a lot more of a bitch than the advertisers'd tell you.

This earns me a puzzled look. "You ran all the way to The Sear's Tower at three thirty in the morning?"

I give him another shrug. "Sure, where would *you* run to at three thirty in the morning?"

He sighs at me and my attitude which I can assume is bad from the way he looks at me. "Well, why not stay in bed? With me?"

I want to tell him that it's because sometimes he acts like we're no more intimate than two complete strangers in line at Starbucks. I want to tell him this. I don't.

"I just needed some time to think."

"Really?" He asks, that indefinable edge still in his voice. "So, what did you think about on this run to the Sears Tower?"

I feel guilty at being so pleased to see the Emergency sign that hangs over us as we walk in. I smile lightly, as we sign our names in. "Oh y'know, you, me...and...stuff."

He sees the smile, and returns it one eyebrow raised in a silent question mark. All thoughts of jogging and thinking time lost in this new topic. "'Stuff', Abby?"

I smile, my name written legibly enough, and look up at him. "Oh y'know..." I lower my voice, and lean in towards him. "Secret nurse stuff."

His hands reach for my waist, and there's another silent question mark within those eyebrows. "Secret nurse stuff?"

I'm conscious of the fact that we're in wide view of all the medical professionals who include gossip as their primary hobby. But it's hard to concentrate on the rest of the universe when his eyebrows are raised like that, and so I succumb to letting his lips graze off mine, his tongue playfully finding my lower lip.

He tastes of burnt toast.

I lean back again, my hands playing with his hair. And I remind myself to hide the Bryl Cream a little deeper into the bedside. "Oh...only a little something I patented."

This provokes another teasing smile, and another toast flavoured kiss.

"Miss Lockhart?"

Luka and I shift back into professional distances at the sound of this voice. Luka feels that he should explain to Weaver the exact nature of our lateness, and she nods understandingly at us and our dead dog, of the name Fido. We promise to call in, in advance the next time any of our animals decides to step out in front of out of control Pizza Delivery Guys, and she nods again understandingly.

I want to lose myself in the feel of those lips. Abby isn't alone when she isn't kissing alone.

But Luka's already back to being just another normal couple who fuck when no one else is looking.

He wants to know what time's Abby's break at, if she'll be able to catch a coffee with him at some point, and if she can get him a suture kit, please and thank you.

* * * *

It's twenty-three and a half hours into my day, and according to my timetable, in fifteen minutes if you were to walk in here drunk, and drooling, and killing any, and all of Frank Sinatra's songs, I wouldn't have to know anything about it.

Dave's flirting with a girl with a Silicon Valley that Bill Gates could be proud of and Weaver is arguing with yet more 'ignorant-selfish-got-their-jobs-on-their-backs-minions-of-satan' phone receptionists.

People are throwing up, picking noses, picking fights, idly twiddling broken thumbs as they wait for doctors and nurses to 'ooh' and 'ahh' over them, giving them educated diagnoses and endless prescriptions of valium.

Welcome to just another night in the life of Abby.

I find myself slamming my locker door shut with energy that I didn't know I could have on only three hours sleep.

This startles the sleeping body of Carter.

"Wha...??!!...Jesus Abby."

The neglected charts on his lap drop against his feet with a thud.

I smile, and tell him that I really didn't mean to startle him, and he looks at me playfully and tells me like hell I didn't.

And Abby smiles guiltily.

Dave makes his presence known to us, with moody mutterings to himself, and the slam of the lounge doorway. He wants to know why girls need to date guys with flashy cars and fathers who know the ins and outs of the New York stock exchange, and he wonders why he couldn't be one of those guys, huh? The world isn't fair.

Carter tells him that life isn't fair.

Agreeing with this, he turns to smile at me, before finding a clean enough mug, and the coffee pot.

"True love playing hard to get?" I say teasingly, as I stuff several medical journals into my bag and then sling it across my shoulder.

He gives me an eyes twinkling smile. "It's what she does best." He sighs, and sipping on his mug says, "God this is exactly what I need."

Carter is stretched out across the sofa, "...All I need is..." he glances at me quickly, but then shifts his eyes down to a happy red stain on his white shirt, "...a detergent that actually gets blood out of clothes."

I sigh, "And all I really need is..."

...Something more than this...

...A Big Book of Answers...

...to come home and find that the man that I want to spend the rest of my life with, is lying in my bed wearing only a smile and a bowl of Chunky Munky...

"What I really need is a window repairman, and a Swiss Bank Account."

And Luka's on until six tomorrow morning, and so it's just me leaving County's doors, and it's just me walking home, and it's just me that I have to live with.

Welcome to just another night in the life of Abby.

* * * *

It's been four days since I've had the honour to be graced with my mother's presence.

Four days, and I've reclaimed my apartment, with the help of a locksmith and lots of air freshener. Luka calls it tough love, I asked him what love had to do with anything --I just wanted my bathroom back.

My mother's vanishing act doesn't surprise me. It's just another little scene in this Broadway dance of ours. This is the fifteen minute interlude, where you try to recover from all the wooden acting with a bag of nachos, where you have a cigarette and forget that Romeo has to die, and where you find yourself constantly checking your watch to see when it's all going to start again.

And I'm glad that I got here when I did --my fridge was beginning to look like some kind of advanced biochemical experiment; the milk was cultivating an army of living bacteria and my lettuce was practically capable of using primitive tools.

I have a theory that a giant red fabric filled bomb was planted inside my apartment, and therefore, all the pieces of tacky fabric that I keep finding in my home, under my bed, in my underwear can be blamed on that. I mean, just how does a person go about sticking pieces of red fabric in underwear?

Luka's doing his time at County at the moment, and I'm currently...picking through the aftermath of my mother's visit. Apart from the whole red fabric thing, I'm also filling up bin liners with bottles of cheap wine, cheap 3% alcohol with misleading birthplaces and dates, and then there's the broken pieces of vodka bottles, and the smashed remnants of china, and the half eaten tins of soup and beans with greasy spoons jutting out of them leeringly. Claudia Schiffer gives me an unforgiving Look as she finds herself under tins and tins of alphabet soup.

I'm also surprised to find that the money that I had stashed behind a book on my desk, for emergencies and that short black dress in the window at Macy's, is gone. Maybe it wanted to see the world?

I've been doing this for an hour, or maybe more, when I suddenly find myself, sitting against my bed, my eyes burning up with anger, and hurt, and then I find fresh tears coming out, one after another, after another, until I'm crying, and sobbing, and letting my mascara wash itself away in a sea of salt and hurt.

The tears are hot, and unexpected, and they burn as they make their way down to an old shirt of Luka's that I wear whenever I wake up next to him, causing the bridges of my breasts to dampen, and I forget what time it is, and I want something to numb this all away, I want something to numb these 'average' feelings away.

And the tears burn against my skin, unwelcome visitors, and I brush my hands against them again and again, but, when something begins to bleed, it doesn't stop bleeding until the wounds have healed and scarred, and so Abby cries.

*Bang* *Bang*

I wake up with a jolt.

My head feels light and my eyes feel strangely vacant. They scan across my room...it's clean. I mean, you could hardly tell what kind of a ground zero this place had been if you hadn't actually experienced the explosion. I can see the carpet. Which is a definite improvement.

I feel empty, but refreshed, and inspired to get myself a cup of coffee, when the sound that forced me into consciousness returns.

*Bang* *Bang*

Knocking? I sigh, and pull myself into a standing position, ready to face whatever religion pushing Encyclopedia selling nut that happens to be roaming around the streets at...I glance at my watch, nine thirty pm...

I slept for four hours.

I pull off the latches one at a time, and I can hear impatient foot shifting on the other side. My door's made of cheap plywood -you could hear someone's heart beating from the other side if you listened hard enough. Not that I've ever listened hard enough...

More impatient knocking.

I swing the door open, and my prepared speech goes flying out. "Look I've already accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior, and I don't want any more goddam copies of the Watchtower, so if you'll just..." I stop just in time to catch laughter. I smile, as the figure on my doorstep suddenly becomes apparent in the dim lighting. "Well hey Carter...not resorting to selling issues of The Watchtower are we?"

He smiles again, obviously having enjoyed that little outburst of mine. "No, not yet, and nice to see you too Abby." He stands aside to reveal a grinning older gentleman, oh great, Abby had an audience. Carter turns to face the man, "Mr Roberts, this is Abby Lockhart, Abby Lockhart, Mr Roberts."

I smile politely and take Mr Robert's offered hand. "Hi there." And then I turn back to face Carter, my curiosity and dumbfoundedness obviously being expressed on my face as Carter smiles at me and says simply, "He's here to repair your window."

And with that, I stand aside, and let Mr Roberts in, giving him directions to which innocent window it was that Maggie's hand vented it's anger through, although he couldn't miss it, I tell him, as it's the one with the cardboard and ductape covering.

And then I turn back to face Carter whose leaning against my door frame, looking like he does this kind of good Samaritan thing everyday, and I shake my head, "Carter...why...?"

He shrugs as he turns to look at me, "You said you needed your window fixed, right?" I give a vague shake of the head. "Well, I happened to mention this to Mr Roberts, who happened to owe me a favor, and now... you happen to have a new window."

I try to say something. But I'm speechless. Somebody buying me a new window has left me speechless. One day it's going to happen to you, and I can assure you, you will be touched.

"Carter..." I stop myself and give into being emotional. I reach my arms around his tall frame, around his neck, and pull him towards me, "God Carter --thank you. It's the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me..." I'm smiling, and there are fresh tears in my eyes. I can feel his body become tense under me for just a second, and then his hands are rubbing at my back, and he's telling my hair that it's OK, and that it was nothing really, it was nothing.

I lean back, and smile again. "Thank you...I mean it Carter, thank you. God, you didn't get me a Swiss bank account too, did you?"

It might just be the lighting, but I could have sworn that he was blushing, just a bit. He's smiling, and that makes me smile even more. I motion towards the inside of my house, "You want to come in, get some coffee or something?"

He nods, and I guess he wasn't expecting that kind of a response as he doesn't say a word as he follows me into my excuse for a kitchen. The bin liners line one end of the wall, and one small window lets moonlight dust all my kitchen surfaces, the cutlery glinting at us as we walk in.

After switching on the lights, and pouring him some coffee, I offer him a seat, and I lean back against one of the counters. I'm still not sure what exactly to say, and so I'm content to just watch him glance around the kitchen, and then, eventually at me.

I realize how I must appear to him, and cringe internally. My hair is still all poofy from sleep-or lack thereof, I'm wearing a pair of flannel pajama bottoms that are too big for me, an old vest, and an open tee shirt that Luka was wearing at some point last night.

I look like hell.

Therefore it comes as no surprise when he asks me how 'things are.'

I sigh, and smile politely, "Things are not...so bad, I guess."

He pauses, and then with more hesitation asks, "And Maggie?"

The mere mention of her, and I can feel my stomach turn itself into twisted Boy Scout knots. Did he want the War and Peace version, or the edited for younger viewers one?

"My mother, huh? She's fine too...I guess, in that special way she has." I have a broad definition of fine.

"Really?"

Another stomach flip. There had been a definite question mark at the end of those two syllables.

"It's ten o' clock at night Carter...you don't *really* want to discuss my insane, obnoxious excuse for a parent do you?"

I can hear him thinking. Well, not hear him exactly, but I could see his brain ticking over, all the neurons and synapses working away, behind those dark irises of his.

"Well when was the last time that *you* did?"

Another pregnant pause. "Well, with her doctors, with my landlord, with some more doctors, I even tried one of those psychology hot-lines on TV, you know, see if they have a 'how to keep your crazy mother from ruining your life' mail order kit. They didn't."

A light laugh. "I think I probably bought the last one." And then he looks back up at me, and lifts his shoulders lightly, his voice soft. Concerned. "You, uh, you haven't spoken to me."

Sighing I take a mouthful of caffeine into my mouth, and let it settle there for a bit, before swallowing. I can hear objects being shifted around in my room, and the sounds of night falling like a dirty silk sheet across Chicago.

I shake it all off, and smile. "You know more about my mother than she does, Carter... What about you, how are things with you?"

He smiles, and although I can see that he's intrigued by my silence on this subject, doesn't push it. "Honestly?"

I nod, "Honestly."

He smiles, and takes a sip of coffee from my Garfield mug, "Well I don't know, my karma's starting to look pretty bad."

I smile, "Well have *you* accepted Christ as your personal savior?"

He laughs and shakes his head, and then Mr Roberts comes in and tells me that 'it's as good as new' and that if I have any problems, my boyfriend over there can just give him a ring, and Carter and I laugh, and tell him that he's not my boyfriend, and I'm not his girlfriend, and he gives us a funny look and shakes his head disappointingly at Carter, and then I find myself sitting alone in my moon dusted kitchen, with a Garfield coffee cup in one hand, and a lonely feeling burning a cavity into my stomach.

* * * * *

Luka's wearing too many clothes.

That's the last coherent thought that passes through my synapses as he walks in, a grocery bag in one hand and an Italian take out in the other.

These soon fall to the floor with a satisfying thud, as Luka finds himself cornered up against my cheap ply wood door, the taco bell worshipping neighbors' finding themselves turning their TV volumes down to tune into the randy young couple next door, and I want to give them a good show, and Luka's lips taste too much like Luka, and my hands are pulling at his silk shirt, and his hands are two steps too far behind me, and we don't say anything, and he doesn't question anything, and I wonder what my mother would say, and I wonder if great sex is all I am, and I need him to need me, and I need him to pull my top off and need me.

And Loneliness may not be great company, and she may not know the greatest bars, or have the best reputation, but she's always there.


* * * * *
* *
To be continued...