blue hawaiian
AUTHOR: Isabelle Kennedy
FEEDBACK: kennedyisabelle@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE:
CATEGORY: Corday/Romano. Corday POV.
SPOILERS: Anything up to & including 'Lockdown'
RATING: R (language, sexuality)
DISCLAIMER: All characters are the property of Michael Crichton, John Wells, NBC & Warner Bros. No copyright infringement intended. Title and summary are courtesy of Pavement. Archive anywhere; just drop me a line first.
SUMMARY: "Aloha means goodbye and also hello/It's in how you inflect."
Peace. Silence broken only by waves, by water lapping around the edges of consciousness. Palm trees wafting in the breeze, like myriad biblical fans. The scent of summer heavy in the air.
You shut your eyes and try to forget.
When you open them again, the city is sticky and humid, the oppressive heat of early summer pushing down on your shoulders like a leaden weight. And yet it isn't as hot as Hawaii; it couldn't ever be that hot, that peaceful and languid. You wonder what it must be like to live somewhere that doesn't experience seasons, or at least not in the same way. Somewhere static and stationary, where the variation in temperature and climate is barely perceptible. Nothing like England, with its unpredictable weather and omnipresent rain. Certainly nothing like Chicago. You've been here for nearly six years and you still don't think you're accustomed to the extremes, to the blinding heat and the searing cold. You don't think you ever will be. And you're not sure that it even matters.
You stand in the centre of your office, absently tapping your foot against a box of medical texts. The room doesn't look any bigger now that you've removed all your possessions. If anything, it looks smaller, as though the walls are closing in on you. Maybe they are. You aren't used to feeling this way; helpless and impotent and knowing that, in the end, your years of medical training meant nothing. Knowing that there was nothing you could do to save your husband, that there were only so many drugs you could prescribe to alleviate his pain. And he was in pain: death is not as it appears in films. In real life, there is no gloss or tasteful fade to black. Death is humanity in the raw; the fear, the senses disappearing one by one and the body losing its control.
Sometimes you thought that dying was an art, a play that you'd seen too many times for it to shock. But not this time.
You can't remember how often you've given bad news to relatives, said 'I'm sorry, they didn't suffer' and known it was a lie. And you're just glad he was spared that final indignity, that final denigration of death into something palatable, understandable and wholly unreal. In a way, his suffering helped you, allowed you to feel that he was being freed from further agony. For that, at least, you can be thankful.
But, sometimes, alone in the dark, you wonder if the only reason you went back to him was because he was dying. That, in the end, the least you could do was watch him die like a good wife should. If you were religious, then you might think that this was your punishment for abandoning him. Except you haven't been to church since you were at school and, anyway, you aren't sure if Anglican guilt exists.
Maybe you should have been Catholic instead.
You did love him, though and you aren't sure why you need to keep reminding yourself of that. You loved him, but it wasn't what you thought it would be. There was no pain or hunger, none of the exquisite agony of loving someone, of wanting someone so much that it hurts. It was never about pure, unadulterated passion, but then your parents had that once and you saw where it got them. You truly believed that it was better to have someone who made you feel safe and protected and loved, than someone who had the capacity to both complete and destroy you.
Because you're not a romantic, you never have been. You've spent too long with men who hurt you, men you couldn't trust and men who didn't care, for that. And you've hurt them and betrayed them too; it was never entirely one-sided. Despite everything you knew, despite everything you aspired to be, you used your sexuality as a weapon. It grates, this realisation.
And because it wasn't just about sex with Mark, because he made you think that you had more to give, it blinded you to the reality that he might not be enough. He loved you and he made love to you. He treated you with respect; something that you weren't used to, something you didn't think you always deserved. But, ultimately, you didn't want that, you didn't need someone who would let you fall because they were too afraid to stand up to you. You needed an equal.
And sometimes you just needed to be fucked.
When the door opens, you don't turn around. You know who it is already.
"Last minute packing, Lizzie?"
His voice is sharp despite the words, sharp enough to wound.
"I don't want to talk about it."
But he steps into the room, shutting the door. "Well, that might be a problem since your midnight flit back to merry England is leaving us rather short-staffed."
You feel trapped, suddenly, in the office, in his presence.
"I'm not flitting back to England, as you so charmingly suggest."
"Oh?"
You turn around. "I'm going home."
He snorts. "You haven't been home for six years."
"Exactly."
And then his eyes narrow slightly. "Are you really prepared to leave all the memories of the dear, departed Dr Greene here?"
You meet his gaze steadily. "Fuck you, Robert."
But you don't really mean it, not enough. It sounds weary and trite, even to your own ears.
"You've no idea how long I've been waiting for you to say that."
As does his response.
"Please don't presume that you know anything about my marriage," you say stiffly.
There is a slight smile at the corner of his mouth. "I know more than you think, Elizabeth."
And he's probably right, even though you'd never admit it. There is a long silence and you sit on the couch, partly so that you don't have to face him. Eventually you speak.
"Nobody knows how to act around me anymore. They don't know what to say to me, so they don't say anything."
He kneels in front of the couch and you can sense his presence now.
"They all came to the funeral, they all told me how sorry they were, how it was a tragedy," you say, realising how banal those words of comfort seem. "But it didn't happen to them."
Your voice cracks. "It's not fair."
When you raise your head, he is close, too close, in the darkened office. And it's both minute and immense, like being trapped under ice with only a cigarette lighter.
"No, it isn't," he says softly, reaching up to stroke your cheek. You flinch slightly, but don't move away. "It's not fair."
This is too dangerous, too volatile and you know that you should leave now.
But the sexual attraction has, perhaps, always been there. You've just never allowed yourself to think about it before. Not really anyway, not seriously. He was the type of man you might have slept with before Mark; arrogant, focused and deliciously obnoxious. It isn't this that bothers you: most of the time, you find it amusing. But sometimes you wonder how much of that persona is real. Sometimes you wonder what it would take to learn the truth. And it makes you laugh, this notion that, if you went to bed with him, you'd discover that he isn't really a bastard. Because he is and that's part of the attraction.
You know that you should leave, but you can't. Instead, you lean down and kiss him.
At first, he is unresponsive; his mouth tight with surprise, his fingers frozen on your face. You want to smile at this, at his shock in getting what he wanted. Then suddenly his hands tangle in your hair and his tongue slides over your lips and you forget everything.
But only for a moment. Then, just as suddenly, you're pushing him away. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..."
His hand falls from your cheek. "It's okay."
And you know that he means it, that it won't change anything if you leave, only that if you do, it has to be now. But you can see the desire in his eyes and, at that moment, it's all that matters. After everything, it's that simple. You reach out for him again, not caring how inadvisable it is and kiss him hard. It's what he's wanted for six years and it amazes you that he has waited this long. And when he slides his tongue over the roof of your mouth, you wonder why he did.
If someone had told you six hours ago that you'd be begging Robert Romano to fuck you, then you would have laughed. Now you aren't sure you can even breathe. You think wildly that maybe you have a fetish for bald men. But this is completely different from being with Mark; it's raw and primal and passionate. It's tear-stained lust, unstoppable and inevitable.
Because, really, there's no aphrodisiac quite like loneliness.
Your mouth is slick against his throat as your hands unbuckle his belt and you stop thinking why this is a bad idea. Instead, as he presses you back against the couch, you focus on the one reason why it is. It's sweat and straining and bodies sliding together. It's life in the midst of death, the most basic affirmation of life in the face of your own mortality.
Afterwards, sitting on the couch, you look down at your hands, twisted together.
"This was..."
He interrupts you, one hand raised. "This didn't mean anything. It was just grief."
You know that he is offering you a way out. A way to claim that this was all a mistake, that you're too screwed up to understand what you're doing.
"No, no it wasn't."
And you leave then, forcing yourself not to look back.
But later, when you close your eyes, you find that you can't forget.
Finis.