Note: Set in an AU. I liked the Sark/Lauren relationship and I wondered, if Lauren hadn't had her characterization changed midstream, how would it have played out with that in mind?
500 words on the nose btw. G
"Slipping"
She met him at a little grocer's stand at a little market near home.
It was quite accidental and perfectly innocent so Lauren thought nothing of it. They bumped into each other reaching for the same mushroom and shared an embarrassed smile when several rolled to the floor. An even bigger smile, and more embarrassed, when they bent to pick them up, knocked heads and sent the rest tumbling to join their fallen brethren.
Lauren had immediately apologized, he'd reciprocated and that had been the beginning of it.
She kept telling herself it was most certainly not an affair. It wasn't. They bumped into each other at the market, sometimes literally, they had coffee, they talked, discussed literature and on more whimsical days, recipes. Hardly the titillating events one would ever associate with an extramarital affair but Lauren wasn't fooling herself. In the way that mattered, it was, and what was worse, she couldn't find it within herself to care.
Michael was so caught up in the return of his precious Sydney, along with the rest of their coworkers, that Lauren had begun to feel like a ghost within her own marriage. She was sure the psychologists would prattle on about emotional starvation, disconnection, and whatever buzz words they'd come up with to describe her current situation. The terms for it were irrelevant to her. By the return of the sainted legend, she'd been somehow stripped of her own identity. A shadow at work, something less than that at home, she'd met him the very moment she needed to.
And that was the dangerous part. Justin was charming, handsome, had studied abroad as she had, and was only too willing to give her everything Michael couldn't seem to be bothered to. The more emotionally distant her husband became, the more Lauren found herself depending on the conversation, the compliments, even the smile that would light up Justin's face when she came into view.
It was a worrisome trend and Lauren knew it. She could easily see the road it had the potential to take. She could see herself loving him, a tiny and rebellious part of her desperately wanted to, and he loving her. Already, the weekend mornings on which she bumped into him were her favorite times of the week. She looked forward to seeing him. Almost more than she did Michael.
More than anything, it seemed, she'd begun to dread seeing her husband. The distracted smile and kiss on the cheek she'd recieved when he came home carried with them a sting of pain. His true affections were no longer hers and Lauren couldn't deny the fact - no matter how much she wished she could. She was losing Michael by increments. Little slips, farther and farther away, with each slip a razor sharp slice to her soul.
Perhaps that was why, when she saw Justin's face on her computer screen with Julian Sark's name beneath his picture and immediately realized the import of the revelation...
She said nothing.
finis