Greetings to the few, the proud, the MI faithful. I'd always intended to finish this, though I know (Syd) that it went against all that we hold dear in Shippy-Ville. So may I carefully present the conclusion...
Anonymous Shimmer
Part Two
She's become a distraction. It's only after the very public argument that this is apparent. He shouldn't have yelled at the low-level administrator, but having drones question his decisions turns his self-destruct dial to annihilation mode. When he seeks the mountain air and gulps down its chill to find calm, he realizes that it wasn't the man's ignorance that had set him off. He'd had a small window during which the nearest cell tower would bring him her voice and he'd missed it. Because the man wanted justification for a procedure that any first year med student would understand. And now a flying tin can would be carrying her to another continent. The sniveling suit's capacity to hear had been greatly diminished for the inconvenience.
All signs pointed to a long week. He can already feel the yearning build in places where she'd stamped an irrefutable claim. It'll make him crankier and there's a team full of good people that would have been safer for a little forewarning. Though the argument probably accomplished that. If only he'd have spoken with her, there'd be a tighter lock on his newly rampant emotions.
It remained a secret, though he thinks any suspicions would be well-hidden by his talented team. For all the attempts to smother them, the signals are leeching out of him. The grins for no reason and the increase of personal calls taken in the corridors speak of a life slowly reclaimed. But the shorter fuse with no provocation tends to coincide with an empty bed. Possessive, he's never been but is beginning to genuinely hate when her career calls her from their two-person world. It is unprecedented, the number of times he actually leaves the office and some nights bring a full sprint to seek her and the fulfillment of whatever need has consumed his day. Grinding through a case with an adolescent one-track mind is disconcerting but seemingly untamable. Many times he barely closes the front door before they collide with the wall and act out this obsession. She likes that his desire is so strong but it scares him that he'd be capable of becoming addicted to anything. Only it's unclear what he's dependent on; the woman or what she does for him.
As guilty as he feels for the way this relationship began and continues, he hasn't the fortitude to change it. Until he catches his pathologist shaking her head at him and though she can't know what he's doing, his conscience turns it into a verdict. So little is known about her beliefs, her goals, her dreams and the absence of proper knowledge eats at him. So he tells Lily they need to decide what they will be and her silence breaks him.
Except her joyful embrace says she's ready.
She's becoming a distraction. The scrape of cardboard pushed across hardwood floors is easy to tune out, but the broken glass does nothing for his concentration. Lily doesn't mind that he brings work home since it means she's free to interrupt with a massage. Her designer's eye has already determined the spots needing color and enhancement. Such decadent tastes has his lady and he finds he enjoys the corruption of his earthtone palate. It isn't the huge adjustment he expected, having her here at all hours and they celebrated fiercely when her condo sold. In every room of their newly shared abode.
He fills the townhouse with plants that will surely die under his watch, because he's learned that she loves them. Just as she loves life, in an exuberant, encompassing way that transforms the weary man he'd been into a being with matching energy. But only in her presence. It's concerning how the emptiness rushes back when he's anywhere she isn't. He'd missed his ex-wife when they'd been separated, first by cases, then by legality. But never like this. While the healthiness of such attachment is debatable, she's one compulsion that will be repeatedly indulged.
It's no longer a secret, though he wasn't the one to divulge his state of bliss. She had waited for him in the parking garage one night and kissed him methodically despite the interested faces in the windows. The tones of 'Connor's got a girlfriend' had been sing-songed under Frank's breath and everyone from his pathologist to his boss was sporting the oddest little smiles. A man caught, he was. Though he gently scolded Lily later that an open air peep-show was no way to introduce herself. And the flight to the next epidemic was wrought with tongues being bitten, as the team who lived for answers looked sideways to him for a few, which he was determined not to give. Privacy lasted to the end of the case, when he'd been summarily cornered and pressed for details with more puppy dog eyes than the city pound.
In time, he finds it easier to share. Because there is a reward system in place that slightly, almost, nearly makes up for the agonizing effort. A house filled with music and greenery and perfume and spices and laughter traces patterns on him with the warmest touch to create a home he's never had. It's a life with no expectations, no duty or requirements. This wasn't his marriage, nor any idea he'd ever entertained of how coexistence might be. When his child asks to stay the summer with them, he knows he's crafted something worthwhile. Because the eyes of an innocent see this as good. So it must be.
And when she proposes, he's never been more ready.