Happy Monday!

Are there any Gilmore Girls fans here? Because I lovingly dub this piece "Friday Night's Alright for Fighting" after one of my all-time favorite episodes.

I think that's all I have to say for an intro, hahaha. Oh! And that I've never included a disclaimer about Sailor Moon not being mine, because it's not. I only own lots of merch because even at ::insert my age here::, I always need merch.

Enjoy! (Or hate me today.)

There comes a moment in every couple's relationship where there is that one, implosive argument so destructive and detonating, it leaves scars that signal that the honeymoon phase is over. What is most frustrating about it is that It only takes one mistake, one word, or one act before all Hell breaks loose. Apologies or groveling may mend some of the hurt, but it is never quite the same from there. The relationship shifts into the dynamic of one of compromise. And once the relationship boundaries are officially set, things become quite routine. The sex becomes familiar, you learn more about your partner's particulars instead of their passions, you come to crossroads about where to go in the future.

That is, if you are able to make it past your first, true fuck-up.

He blew another frustrated breath into his bangs as he glanced at his phone screen for what felt like the hundredth time in ten minutes. He knew he let her down. Not in a million years did he expect his meeting to run until 10:00 in the evening. He knew that the London-based company was serious about their contract negotiations, but it was seven grueling hours of video conferencing with his team, their team, and their respective attorneys before they were able to hang up. In the end, they settled on an agreement that they would draft up in the morning and reconvene on Monday at six in the morning, but as the time continued to tick, he knew he had a lot of making up to do for missing tonight.

At least, he reconciled, he called her and told her his meeting was running over. From her response, she took the news in stride. However, when he called her a handful of times the moment he was able to with no avail, he was able to get Chad on the phone, who gave him a heads up about what he was about to walk into.

"Dude, she was literally looking at the door the entire night. The girls went out to some nightclub called 'Mints.' She's pretty fucking pissed, dude, and I can't say I blame her."

He sighed as he continued to hold on to the large bouquet of flowers, bouncing the back of his head lightly against the doorframe of her apartment. It wasn't that he didn't want to be there tonight; he did. However, this was one of those times where he really could not leave. If he did, he would have been as good as shit-canned; bye-bye, partnership.

The vote by the Board was only a few more months away. While he knew, he was going to get the partnership, if he did anything to jeopardize it in the next couple of months, he could very well be passed over. He already had sacrificed so much to get to where he was; why would he give up now?

He pinched the bridge of his nose; he thought he found someone who understood that. Maybe he didn't after all.

He frowned; the silence and brooding in his thoughts was making him second guess himself and what he was doing here. She already ignored all of his calls and texts. Didn't she claim just days before she would make an effort to at least understand? He never once maliciously canceled their plans. Hell, he was even there for her when she was ill and stayed by her side until she was discharged from the hospital. He was there, more times than he ever had been before.

Perhaps, he thought solemnly, she wasn't the person he was supposed to be with after all.

The thought saddened him. He never, ever got this close to feeling like this. Never, ever committed himself to one woman. For fuck's sake, he rearranged his business trip to make it home in time to attend a silly high school reunion. Surely that showed commitment.

Where was her commitment?

Currently, it was at a male strip club. The thought of her throwing money at male strippers shaking their dicks in her face disgusted him enough it caused his nose to wrinkle. He didn't think she was that kind of person. He paused.

Then again, she did wear that extremely skimpy outfit the time he helped her out at that dance club. He saw her grind her hips tantalizingly slow on that douchebag boy who hurt her when she wanted to move away from him. A groan escaped his lips while his mind continued to draw up negative conclusions.

He checked his phone again. 2:15.

He was just about to deposit the flowers at her doorway when he heard a slamming of the door at the opposite end of the stairwell, resulting in him turning to watch her ascend down the hallway.

Truth be told, he instantly assumed that when he saw her come home she would be plastered, hanging all over some friend who was helping her to her doorway. Instead, he watched as she strutted confidently to her doorway, despite being scantily clad in a tube top and insanely short-shorts, her eyes narrowed as she set her sight on him. If she had a drink or two, he never would have guessed.

The way she stared at him, however, he knew he was in for one hell of a fight.

He swore he heard the bell ding in the background.

Round 1: Apologize.

"I've been calling you all night," he said as she closed the space between him. "I had no idea my meeting was going to go so late. I tried calling you the moment I got out."

If she heard him, she made no attempt to acknowledge it. Instead, she slipped her key into the lock of her door and twisted it. In a swift movement, she pushed the door open and walked in, letting it fall behind her. He caught the door and opened it to let himself in, but she was already making her way to her bedroom.

"I know I let you down," he called to her again with sympathy as he deposited the flowers on the door side table. "I'm sorry."

He received a response of a zipper, followed by a thud on the floor, to what he presumed was her taking off her boots.

"Serena, come on," he said as he felt a flash of annoyance summon within. Surely she wasn't this immature?

A scoff. At least it was something.

"I didn't do it on purpose."

Silence.

"Ok, fine. Have it your way." He was just about to turn to leave when he saw her reemerge out of her bedroom, changed into a pair of sweats and an oversized t-shirt, a fiery look in her eye.

"You know," she finally said in a voice that he recalled hearing once before, "I'm a pretty easy-going person. For fuck's sake, my life revolves around shoveling food in my face. So when someone tells me that they'll be late to something that they're supposed to come to with me, it's no big deal."

"So then why are you so pissed?"

"Nuh-uh," she cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Typically, implying you'll be late means you're going to make an effort to arrive. And when said person who says they'll be late cannot come at all, they'll usually let the person in waiting know so they can move on from waiting for them."

"I know-"

She laughed, one he had never heard before; and yet, it was one that was sure she had laughed many times before. "No, Darien, you don't know."

He let out another frustrated sigh. "I don't know what to even say here."

"When you found out you weren't going to be able to make it at all, did you text me?'

"No."

"Call me?"

He sighed. "No."

"Smoke signal?"

"Serena, come on."

"Telegram?"

"Stop."

"I'm not hard to please, Darien."

"Serena, please," he pleaded as he tried to reason with her. As the words fell out of his mouth, he was growing increasingly aware that apologizing was going absolutely nowhere at this point.

"No. No. I understand working long hours. I understand shit coming up. What I can't fucking fathom is the person who supposedly 'cares about you' not bothering to fucking say anything and completely ghost my birthday."

He sighed as he closed his eyes to steady the fight inside him. "I didn't have my phone with me in the meeting," he reasoned. "I couldn't."

She continued; "And you know what, I said I'd work with you on understanding that shit fucking happens every now and again. This has nothing to do with your lack of physical presence. This has everything to do with being God damn disrespected!" she growled. "And that, I do not fucking deserve."

Round 2: Defend Yourself.

"Really?" he asked cool, unable to contain being attacked anymore. She was past reconciliation here. "From where I'm standing, I did everything correctly. I called you the moment I had a chance to tell you that I would be running late. I had no clue how long the meeting would take, and I have repeatedly apologized for that. I also called you the instant I got out of that meeting, but you decided to ignore my fucking phone call."

"I didn't want to talk to you," she said flatly, her arms crossed.

This time, he continued. "You know what else is fucking disrespectful? When your girlfriend decides to dress up like a call girl and go out to a seedy nightclub to get dicks shaken in her face. How's that for being disrespected?"

She scoffed. "Firstly, I can wear whatever I God damn please," she retaliated. "And second, Mints isn't a seedy nightclub and there were no dicks jiggling in my face. They keep their clothing on, thank you very much. Don't lump me in to that kind of group of women who go to nude clubs.

"Call it what you want, Serena. It's no different than if I went to a strip club, but they kept their panties on. I'm pretty sure you'd be throwing a similar bitch-fit if I did."

He watched as she bit her lip. He smirked; she couldn't even deny that one.

"So explain to me what I did wrong here? Because from where I'm standing, coming straight from work and standing outside your damn apartment the last few hours, I did nothing wrong."

She shook her head, as if she couldn't believe his defense. "Are you serious?"

His eyes widened in response to her audacity. "No, I'm asking for the sake of my health. Tell me, Serena, is the person who was standing outside your doorway for hours wrong, or is the person who just quickly did a 180 and went out to a fucking strip club the person who is wrong in this argument?"

Round 3: Burnout

"You know what, if you had bothered to let me know that you were going to be missing dinner completely when you called me all hush-hush, I wouldn't have gone there!"

"What are you talking about? I called you the moment I got into my office at literally a minute after ten!"

"You still could have at least text me that you weren't coming."

"I DID NOT HAVE MY PHONE ON ME."

"Who the fuck doesn't have their phone on them?!"

"Me, when I'm in corporate negotiations with the fucking United Kingdom, on their time!"

"Why the fuck wouldn't you have taken vacation time that night if you knew you had something going on? Block your calendar off? Why the hell would you take a meeting so close to a time you're supposed to be at an event?"

"Because I had to take that meeting."

"At that time?"

"Yes!"

"Did you bother trying to do it earlier or on another date?"

"That's when the client wanted to meet; I'm not up for negotiating that."

"Bullshit. You could have asked them to meet with you on Monday."

"Obviously, you don't fucking get it. It's a multi-billion global company that I am trying to hammer out the fine fucking print with. I don't have until Monday to wait to secure a transaction of that size. It needed to be done then. On their time."

"If you had just blocked out that time on your calendar –"

"It wouldn't have fucking mattered, they would have called me and I would have left to go to the meeting instead!"

"So, what you're saying is, no matter what, you would have went."

"Yes."

She threw her hands up. "Of course you would."

"This is my job, Serena. This is my fucking livelihood you are attacking here. I have worked my ass off to be where I am now. I have sacrificed hours, sleep, relationships, family to get to be here. I am three months away from the Board voting me into their partnership, and I will be damned if I have you question the integrity and my ethics to my dedication and responsibility to my work. Sorry I don't sit around on my ass shoveling food in my mouth and blogging about it. I am taking care of corporations, stock holders, and every fucking thing in between!"

He felt his breathing begin to slow down as silence fell between the two of them. They continued to stare at one another for another moment, but she was the first to break their eye contact, just as he noticed the tears starting to glisten at her eyes.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he realized what had slipped out of his mouth. So, it came as no surprise when he heard her finally tell him what he expected.

"Get out."

It was a whisper, but it felt like a dagger slicing right threw him.

And this time, he had no one to blame but himself.

He didn't bother trying to apologize this time. Instead, he breezed right by her and out the door, closing it softly behind him. He lowered his head in regret as the words replayed in his head.

Sorry I don't sit around on my ass shoveling food in my mouth and blogging about it.

Sit on my ass.

Shoveling food.

Blogging about it.

He stared numbly at the ground as he heard her begin to cry behind the door. He closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten, listening to her sobs, trying to decide if he wanted to go in and fix this mess.

Nevertheless, as much as he wanted to rip it open and apologize, tell her he did not mean it, he could not find the energy to do so.

He tried. He really did.

Why she could not see that, he would never comprehend.

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he turned to walk toward the stairwell, words of truth ringing in his mind.

She didn't understand his world.

And from what he just said to her, he didn't understand hers as well.

#

She buried her head further into her pillow, unwilling or wanting to see the sunlight that morning. The words still stinging from their argument to the point she barely slept last night. They pierced like burning mandala, ripping into her soul. Is that all he thought of her? A dweeb who sat around heaping food in her mouth and writing about it? Did he always think of her so childish?

She curled her knees into her stomach and lifted the covers over her head; the whole argument was painful. Every word. She knew halfway through the argument that she was wrong, so very wrong to get so worked up, but there was no turning back. He had hurt her, and she wanted to make it known he hurt her. Even if his reasoning made sense, even if he waited outside her door for hours, he still hurt her. He wasn't there.

Tears slipped out as she repeated the phrase again; no matter how logical it was, he wasn't there.

Just like Diamond on her eighteenth birthday.

She was all dressed up, ready for a night out with him, her first true night as an adult. And what did he do? He left her sitting on her couch all night, dressed up in an outfit she had saved all her money for and dieted hardcore to fit in to, while he got high in his buddy's garage and didn't show up until 1:00.

He showed up with flowers. He apologized, said he didn't mean it. And while it hurt so much he wasn't there, she forgave him. Instantly. The next day he took her to make up for it, and she let herself believe that everything was okay. It was just a slip. He wouldn't do it again.

But then he did it again.

And again.

And again.

She let out a deep sob, her heart clenching as she recalled Darien's words again, repeating them over and over again. Did he ever take her seriously? Clearly, he thought of her the same way that his societal circle did; just another person a part of a dying breed. Maybe, she just wasn't ready to be in a relationship. Clearly she wasn't able to handle disappointment, let alone backing down from an argument with him.

But after all was said and done, he uttered words that wouldn't be so easy to forget.

Clearly, he didn't understand her world.

And it was becoming painfully obvious she didn't belong with his.

FIN.

I'M JUST KIDDING! I still have a handful of chapters to go before I wrap this story up. I hope you guys enjoyed the ... writing, because no one likes an argument between our favorite couples. And while I firmly believe Darien's reasoning is 100% legit, when you have an ugly backstory of heartache, I think it can magnify your disappointment tenfold. Plus, I know I've been in an argument where I'm so far beyond admitting being wrong that it's gone further south than needed... and that's exactly what she did.

But sometimes when those things happen, we learn from them! The question is: can they?

See you soon!