Title: Flash
Author: Lindsay S.
Fandom: RENT
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Jonathan Larson's, not mine.
Summary: She had always been afraid of thunderstorms.
Notes/Warnings: A bit of disturbing imagery at the end, but nothing too bad.
A flash of light cut through the dark, disturbing her sleep. Forcing her eyes open, she focused on the clock, waiting for the digital numbers to sharpen in her vision. The red letters announced the time to be 2:05. Sitting up and glancing around, she tried to discern what it was that had woken her up. There was a rumble that caused her stomach to clench. She tried hard to convince herself that she wasn't eavesdropping on the beginnings of a thunderstorm, that the sound could easily have belonged to a truck making its way down the street outside her building.
A second flash dashed her hopes, followed more closely by another rumble, low and menacing. She couldn't deny the approaching storm, but she drew her knees up to her chest and imagined the same truck she had invented only moments before. She started listing reasons why it would be out so late. The driver was delivering a shipment of something – tennis balls, she supposed, to a gym midtown. He had come down from Connecticut – no, no, New Hampshire was better – and he'd been making good time, until he'd missed his exit and gotten lost. Read the map wrong, probably. Ended up in New Jersey. Let's say, she thought, tensing as another shot of lightning burst, penetrating the dark room, let's say he just got hopelessly lost and drove all over the state. It took him hours to find – what was that highway? With the George Washington Bridge? Oh, yeah, 95. It took him forever to find 95, and when he finally did, he got off another wrong exit, dumping him off on the wrong side of town. That's why he was wandering through Alphabet City at 2 AM.
It's a good story, she decided, straightening out and laying down again. It had distracted her from the storm that was increasing outside her window. She hadn't even noticed when the rain had started.
She knew she was the only one there, but she turned to the other side of the bed anyway, her hand reaching out of its own accord to search the blankets for the missing body. Cold sheets were all that greeted her touch, no sign of human life to be found.
He never slept at home anymore.
Turning over and staring out the window at the pounding rain, she made a desperate wish that he wasn't outside tonight. Let him be shacked up with some bimbo he'd met at a club somewhere, it was better than thinking about him shivering and wet in some alley two or three blocks from home.
She hated thunderstorms. Always had. Ever since she was a child, she'd come up with elaborate stories to explain away the noises and the light, to distract her from her fears. When they started living together, he used to tease her gently, but when the thunderclaps caused her to tremble, when the lightning flashed white in the dark, he'd always take her in his arms, holding her tight, kissing her forehead, telling her there was nothing to be afraid of. And those were the nights she felt safest.
He never slept at home anymore.
He had found new friends, and new hobbies. He'd introduced her to his new way of life, and she had readily accepted it, because it was him. He wouldn't hurt her. He was the one that protected her and made her feel safe.
The storm was raging. And he wasn't there to tell her it would pass and they'd be okay.
It thundered again two months later, when he pulled her body from the lukewarm bathwater, the life long since drained out of it in ribbons of red.
Time Started: 12:05 AM
Time Finished: 12:38 AM
Date: 5/31/05