Title: Everybody Loves You
Summary: She stays in front of the mirror, leaning closer, wondering if it's possible to fall into yourself. Would she want to if it were? Lit; One-shot. Post 6x18.
Notes: Just one of the many ideas swimming around in my noggin' at the moment – it attacked me this morning as I was running late for school (ain't that the way?). Hope you like.
The quote at the end is from a movie I saw a looong time ago. If you're incredibly curious as to its origin, I could track it down for you. Just know that I don't own it…just as I don't own GG.
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It is what it is.
What's that?
Right. Wrong. It's always been there. It always will be.
Tell me you love me.
I can't do that.
Tell me you love me.
I won't do that. I won't.
But do you?
I won't…
I love you.
I won't…
She wakes up screaming, breath coming in short, staggered gasps.
The next time, he's standing by the ocean. California, she thinks. She knows. How she knows, she's not sure, but it's her dream and she does.
They're on the shores of Venice Beach, facing the receding tide. She watches the sun set over the ocean for the first time and the sky is of beautiful pinks and golds and she can't take her eyes off of it but he's not looking at the sky. He's looking at something else altogether, something she can't make out, something that might not even be there. Farther out, miles away, miniscule and incandescent and 20,000 leagues under the sea. She squints to see what he sees. She wishes she could see what he sees. What he sees when he looks at her and a sense of admiration washes over his features. She's stood in front of the mirror for hours before, trying wanting needing desperately to see it. To see in herself what he's able to see.
He turns to look at her now, his eyes widening ever-so-slightly, appraising her with that look. She wants him to walk away. She wants him to ignore her, to yell at her, to hate her. She wants him to turn his gaze back to the seashore.
She wants to dive into the ocean and find the thing he saw.
This time, she wakes up in a cold sweat, not screaming, not able to make a sound save for the silent tears streaming down her cheeks and splashthud-ing onto the ivory sheets. She never realized water droplets could be so loud against Egyptian cotton.
By the fifth night, she's not sure how much more she can take.
By the eighth night, she begins to welcome them. Knowing that in just so many hours, she'll be seeing him as clearly as if he was really in front of her, as if he was really touching her. She actually misses him during the day.
Until the tenth night, when Logan comes home. Then, the gravity of the situation and her newfound unrequited love for this dreamJess hits her full force and she spends just over an hour in the bathroom trying to quell the panic rising in her chest, finally failing when the bile burning her throat overtakes her. She doubles over, heaving into the toilet before sinking helplessly onto the marble floor.
It's evening when she emerges, face a ghostly white, lips a thin, pale line. On her way past the bed she catches sight of her reflection in the full-body mirror facing the living room and she stops, curious, stepping closer.
She doesn't recognize herself. Not because of the sunken-in look of her face, or the dark circles under her eyes. It's all wrong. Her dyed-hair, her designer clothes, even her eyes seem to be someone else's. They are – they're her mother's, they always have been, but brightness of them is gone. Now, dull, grey orbs stare back at her and she wants to shatter the mirror, to kill its version of her.
What are you doing, Logan's voice asks from far away (so far). She realizes how stupid she must look, but she doesn't care and she doesn't answer him. She doesn't know how to, because she's not quite sure what she's doing herself. Trying to become invisible? No, trying to become visible again. Yes, that's it. What is it that dreamJess sees?
I'm incandescent, she announces.
His reflection glares at her from over her left shoulder – no, not a glare, just a confused look, but it resembles a glare just the same– and stalks off into the kitchen.
She stays in front of the mirror, leaning closer, wondering if it's possible to fall into yourself. Would she want to if it were?
Later, she slides into bed after midnight, having been avoiding her natural need for sleep for fear of the dreams. She knows they'll come, they haven't stopped, but that doesn't mean she's not naïve enough to think that she can prolong the inevitable. The inevitable also being Logan, she realizes, and he rolls over on top of her wordlessly. She doesn't care, and she doesn't respond when he kisses her, when his hand slips up her shirt. She doesn't have the energy to, not after the dream kisses. The lingering intensity of his lips on hers has scarred her for life leaving her unresponsive to any other man's touch, because it did happen for real that once, just two weeks ago, she's sure of it. Logan doesn't notice and keeps touching her anyway, peeling off just her underwear and then his own, no special attention to detail, no foreplay, just business as usual. In five minutes (no, according to the clock, four), he's asleep next to her, but she's not, she's wide awake, watching the city lights dance on the ceiling, wondering how they'd look different in Philadelphia.
Her eyes finally lull close and suddenly they're in Europe and she's showing him all of the things that made her think of him when she was there. But that only lasts for a few moments before they're in bed, a bed, any bed, and he's burning her skin with his fingertips, leaving hot red trails all along her body.
We can't keep doing this.
I can't not.
You need to decide.
I can't do that, either.
You have to.
I can't.
Yes, you can.
He always believed in her. Even dreamJess shows her more faith and trust than the man lying next to her. Silently she sits up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, toes just hovering over the cold hard wood. Biting her lower lip, she places her feet down to meet the floor and scurries over to the closest, noiselessly throwing things into an old duffel bag before she can really think about what she's actually doing.
Had she stopped to make a pro/con list, her decision would have been the same.
The sun is rising across her right arm when she pulls off of the highway. It's a quarter of the way up when she pulls the car into one of the countless open spots in front of Truncheon Books.
She doesn't even know if he'll be there. She doesn't even know what she'll say. DreamJess did most of the talking, not her.
She's not afraid, though. Not of this. Never of this. It was something else altogether, something more powerful.
No one answers when she knocks, but it would be hard to hear from upstairs. She picks up a few rocks to throw before she realizes that she has no idea which window she should aim for, assuming she could even hit it.
So instead she sits on the curb, waiting watching hoping thinking. The sun gets higher and it hits her all at once, the realization that it's been ten years since she's seen a sunrise. Ten years since she and her mother stayed up all night watching every Brat Pack-associated movie ever made and sat on the porch eating Mallomars for breakfast while the sun came up. She is so absorbed in this memory that she doesn't even realize he's rightinfrontofher until his shadow kills the sun's rays and chills her body.
"Hi," she's able to squeak, raising her arm to block the bright when he moves to sit next to her.
He nods almost knowingly and looks at her for a moment, that look, and she's incandescent again and flying.
"I can't stop dreaming about you. Don't you think that means something? I do," she begins…
Can you close your eyes? Pretend you can see the ocean. Pretend you're standing above the ocean.
You're a millionaire.
Pretend you're running under the ocean. You're jumping over mountains. You're jumping over mountains.
Everybody loves you.
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