Hey cool it seems like there are a load of new people getting into this
As well as the old faithful reviewers
Not that you're old
Well you might be, I don't know
But yeah
I'll just shut up and get on with the thank-yous
Thanks to faith, sam, Angel Dust, Caroline25 (happy belated birthday!), matchstickgirl, quiet, SnapDragon, Dracula5555, starbright, AbbyLockhart2, britgirl2003 and third charm.
Thank you very much
And on we go
Plenty of carby-ness is coming in the next chapter
But for now, it's mainly Susan and Eric (strange, I know)
Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
Beyond All Of Everything. Chapter Thirteen. Unlucky For Some
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o SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 12: Carter takes Ollie to play baseball and Abby worries cos she doesn't know where he went. She and Carter ignore each other.
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"But John's not a stranger – you said he was a friend."
"Well he's not anymore."
- o -
"Hey Abby."
Abby looks up to see her brother swing round the corner of the ER.
"Hey Eric," she greets, slightly confused. "What are you doing here?" He smiles.
"Susan left her pager at home so I brought it in for her," he explains. "Now you guys can beep her till she goes crazy; man I'm so glad I don't have your job." Abby chuckles.
"What job do you have?" she asks.
"Um – no job, actually. But that's okay," he shrugs. "Hey we probably have some catching up to do; maybe it'd be better if I took you out for lunch or something. When do you get set free?"
"In about half an hour, then you, me and Ollie can get out of here." She replies, glancing at her watch.
"Who's Ollie?" he frowns, confused. "Boyfriend?" Abby laughs.
"No, Ollie's my son," she tells him. Eric raises his eyebrows in surprise as she begins to walk away. "I'll meet you outside in about 35 minutes, okay?" she calls back to him.
"Ok," he answers, still bewildered; perhaps they had more catching up to do then he thought.
Less than an hour later they are sitting in Ike's, just generally catching up. Ollie sits quietly; shy of this stranger who seemed to be so thrilled to meet him.
"I'm sorry I couldn't let you stay with us, Eric," Abby says. She has a french fry held between two fingers and doesn't notice when Ollie gently eases it out and eats it himself.
"That's no problem," Eric shrugs. "Susan's great." There is a short pause before Eric turns to Ollie. "So how old are you Ollie?"
"Five," Ollie answers, distractedly. "Six in two weeks." Then he kneels up in the booth and waves. "It's John!"
Carter is standing at counter ordering something. He waves back half-heartedly before Abby pulls Ollie back down into the booth.
"Ollie, what did I tell you?" she warns him.
"Who's he?" Eric asks curiously.
"He's John. He used to be a friend from work," Ollie recites. "But now he's…" Ollie trails off, not knowing what comes next.
"No-one. He's no-one." Abby replies, shortly. But for some reason, it really hits her hard when she hears him pointedly adding "To go, please," on the end of his order.
"Well, to be fair, she is married," Susan reasons as she and Jing-Mei sit alone at the Lounge table, on their break. "Maybe that's why they ended it."
"But didn't you see how angry he was the other day?" Jing-Mei points out. "She must've done something."
"I don't know, it could've been something else."
"They're ignoring each other."
"I know. God, it's so stupid. You can see that they really hate doing it, they're just both too stubborn to give in."
"Stubborn – yeah. Yeah, they're really stubborn. I thought they were quite sweet together."
"I know! Hey, I hope he didn't take the stuff we said, badly."
"No, he knows we're just kidding. I wonder what made them both split up?"
"I dunno. Maybe we should get them back together. They're both really miserable now –" Susan shuts up quickly and turns as she hears the Lounge door opening. Carter comes in through the door with his takeout coffee. She turns back around hurriedly, as he sinks down onto the couch.
"Hey Carter," Susan and Deb greet him in an overly-cheery, guilty unison.
"Hello," he answers, dully. There's an awkward silence.
"So anyway," Susan starts up. "Back to what we were saying..."
"Yeah, about…umm…" Jing-Mei searches wildly for a topic.
"Clothes," Susan prompts.
"Movies," Jing-Mei says, at the same time. Carter raises his eyebrows at their poor cover-up.
"Same thing," Susan waves her hand and lapses back into silence.
"You know, we never really were going out," Carter tells his takeout coffee as he stares blankly at it in his hand. Susan and Deb look at him and then at each other.
"Carter…" Susan doesn't know what to say.
"No, but we weren't. There was nothing there," he insists.
Jing-Mei sighs and rests her elbows on the table as she quietly asks him: "Then why do you miss her so much?"
Carter looks up, slightly surprised that she should say that before realising that, in actual fact, she's right.
Susan Lewis is trudging home. She is fed up. It has been a very long day – she forgot her pager, she got yelled at by Weaver and she just got gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe. And she was sick on four times. It is days like these that make her wonder why she didn't take a monotonous but normal office job. Her pager beeps and she groans out loud, getting some confused looks from passers by.
"I'm not going back in!" she moans as she fishes for it in her handbag. She takes it out and finds her own home phone number flashing on the display.
"What's up? What's wrong?" she asks Eric as soon as he picks up. She is hurrying home faster and speaking into her cell phone.
"Susan…" he begins. "I hope you're sitting down…"
"What, what is it?" she demands, getting worried.
"I'm sorry, Susan – we're out of ice cream," Eric tells her, solemnly. She stops in the middle of the street.
"Is that all?" she frowns, confusedly.
"No," Eric speaks slowly and deliberately. "Please can you get some more?" Susan looks at her phone in disbelief before simply hanging up and walking on.
She reaches home after dark and stamps up the stairs, furiously. Bursting through her front door and flinging her handbag onto the couch, she storms around the apartment until Eric comes out from the bathroom, hair still dripping wet.
"Hey cheerful!" he greets her. She turns to him with a dark look. "Did you get the ice – "
He is cut off as Susan slams a carton of Ben and Jerry's onto the kitchen counter.
"Thanks!" Eric chirps, totally ignoring her grumpiness. Susan glares, trying to draw attention to her bad mood. "Wow, I've been so bored this afternoon. Just sat around and did nothing." His eyes flicker over to check whether or not he's succeeding darkening her mood. She's practically fuming.
"Oh, my heart bleeds, Eric," she snaps, sarcastically. "I've been on my feet all day doing my job and working damn hard. And what do I get for it? I get yelled at by my boss, the EL is late, these shoes suck…" she kicks them off, viciously and rants on but Eric just grins and wraps her fingers around a spoon.
"Cheer up?" he suggests, holding out the ice cream pot to her. She looks at him, calming down slightly.
"I was sick on four times," she mumbles, huffily as she scoops out some ice cream. Eric smiles sympathetically and a drop of water falls from his hair onto her spoon.
"And your hair dripped on my ice cream," she adds but, by now, her fury has lost its momentum and she just attempts a lame frown before giving in to a slight smile.
"It's still good," Eric shrugs. "I'll eat it." He leans forwards to eat the slightly diluted ice cream off of her spoon.
"Your hair's really wet," she comments and reaches a hand up to brush it back.
They pause like this: his mouth close enough to hers that he can feel her breath on his lips and her fingers entwined with his hair. They look at each other, suddenly surprised and suddenly very confused. How long do they stay frozen like this for? Time is not an issue, it doesn't seem to pass at all, but there's a sudden splash as the now-melted ice cream falls to the floor. Almost as if this, quite appropriately, unfreezes things, they both jolt into action.
"I'd better clean that up," Susan drops to her knees to wipe away the drip. "And then I probably should take a shower or a bath or something cos I'll smell of puke all day and I hate that…" she babbles on but it doesn't matter because Eric isn't listening.
"Sorry about that," he talks overly loudly and quickly, too. "I should probably dry my hair before it soaks everything else in this apartment and then there was a show on NBC I wanted to watch; I can't remember what it was about but that's okay…" He waves his hand at the TV and just about everything else in the room.
"Right," they both finish simultaneously. "I'll see you tomorrow, then." Susan and Eric say as one. "Goodnight."
There is a brief hesitation from both of them as they wonder whether they should have acted upon that moment but they think better of it and go off to busy themselves in some other activity.
Out of each others' sight, Susan leans against the bathroom door and exhales; Eric groans to himself and hits his forehead with his palm. The ice cream stands on the counter and, undoubtedly feeling very lonely and forgotten, turns to some kind of sludgy mess.