Disclaimer: Nope. It's still not mine. I also have no claim to the song "Dream a Little Dream of Me."
A/n: Hey, remember this fic? Maybe not—it's been so long since I've updated. Ah well, I'm just glad I found the motivation to get back into it.
Feedback will truly be appreciated. Thank you to everyone for your support of this one (and for continuing to read even after all of these months!).
-Ryeloza
Maelstrom
By Ryeloza
i.
"Stars fading but I linger on dear, still craving your kiss…"
She sang under her breath, half-humming, and he came up behind her and put his hands on her hips, feeling her smile as she leaned back against his chest. The words faded from her lips, but continued to croon tinny from the radio. They danced motionlessly, entwined as souls far beyond this world.
"I think of you when I hear this song."
She set down the dish she was washing and placed her hands over his, pulling them up and wrapping them around her, soap bubbles clinging to their fingers, and he thought this might be the moment. Might be if he had bought that ring the other day; might be if only he could find the courage for the words.
"Dream a little dream of me…"
He wakes in the morning still dreaming of the past, the words in his head and her scent in his sheets.
ii.
It feels like weeks of hard work—focusing that anger, letting it become hatred, convincing himself that he didn't need her or miss her—has disappeared in the blink of an eye. Because he can feel her everywhere now that she's been her, an infection that spreads through the entirety of his apartment, seeping into the walls and pouring from the crevices. Even as he showers, he can still feel her on his skin; her touch remains like invisible burns, and it hurts.
He rubs a towel over his hair, ignores the drips of water that trail down his neck into the collar of his shirt, and refuses to look in the mirror because he knows what he'll see—red-rimmed eyes, five o'clock shadow still patchy in the morning light, that deadened look that he's afraid to really examine—before he heads to the kitchen. Breakfast is dreary, tasteless cereal; he gives up halfway through and tosses it down the sink, stands for a moment with his hands against the counter, wondering, quite honestly, if this is the rest of his life.
They can't move on from one another. He could go on to fuck everything in a skirt and she could (will) get remarried and still they'll keep colliding like they did last night. Since the start they've been inevitably, irresistibly drawn to one another, and it won't matter how much time passes, if they hate each other or not, they will always, always find some way to satisfy that burning need to be together.
Maybe that's all they were ever meant to be. Two people weaving in and out of each others' lives forever, scorching the world around them every time they met. Never really meant for the long term.
Maybe getting married had defied their fate, and now this is the price they pay.
iii.
He's hungover and depressed, so he doesn't bother to pretend that he's better than falling on the couch and watching TV all day, ebbing in and out of the world of consciousness. He has more strange, not-dreams about her, most of them fleeting moments where he holds her and feels more secure than a whole lifetime's worth of certainty. When he wakes, he wonders if he ever really thought that, or if it's something that exists only in the tentative world between sleep and wake.
iv.
It is just after seven that he finds the note.
v.
That song is haunting him.
He's half-asleep and he thinks he's dreaming, but it's playing in the background of some movie he doesn't remember putting on.
Just hold me tight and tell me you miss me…
He believes in fate, but it's a secret. An embarrassment he can't admit because of a life rooted firmly in reality (in parents who were never really happy and whose smiles were always just a little too fake; in a major he picked at random because he had to declare and it seemed safe—so much of his life is rooted in safe; in pretty girlfriends he liked, but never really imagined living forever and ever after with; in a daily routine of family and work and life that was rather unvarying). But even with all of that blandness staring him in the face day after day, he still thought maybe…
Still thinks maybe…
It is centuries of songs and stories and poems that tell him otherwise.
That the boy who grew up imagining true love as a fairy tale, but never took a risk, would choose a path that led to her, and suddenly the world would be alive with passion and purpose and it never felt like a choice because it was meant to be…
Meant to be.
Was it?
While I'm alone and blue as can be, dream a little dream of me…
vi.
Dream…memory…it persists to an end…
Her hair was twisted up on top of her head, strands falling haphazardly around her face; she wore pajama pants and a tank top; she'd already taken her makeup off. (The physical details cling in his mind, frozen there forever.) Then she turned in his arms and put her hands around his neck, the suds clinging to the hairs at the back of his neck.
And it was the smile she wore. The way she hummed that song. The music in the background. Her tiny kitchen with no dishwasher and the bubbles floating in the sink. The smell of dinner lingering in the room and the lightbulb above them that kept flickering. It was the patch of skin he touched with his fingers where her tank top rode up—warm, smooth skin—and the little scars he could find blind but never heal. The look in her eyes and the feeling he got every time he saw her.
Her.
All of her.
"Lynette?" he said (time wears the dialogue with more gracefulness than he knows he possessed because he remembers the thrumming of his heart in his ears, and he knows he stumbled over the words, stuttering for perfection he could never find).
"Hmm?"
And the million little things in that moment, the ones he would never forget, pulled together and made him forget everything but her and that feeling that he never wanted to spend another minute apart from her. Their love was too overwhelming to comprehend.
(He still can't.)
"I want to spend the rest of my life with you."
And he could see the gasp in her eyes. See that doubt, that hope, that tremulous anticipation. "What?"
"I don't have a ring…I didn't plan this. But I'm too in love with you to go another moment without saying this, and it's probably all wrong..."
"Tom."
"Will you marry me?"
He should have had a ring. A plan. A way to tell her that this wasn't an impulse but fate…
But as those thoughts stretched through the torturous seconds of waiting for her (he'd have waited forever), none of them mattered.
"Yes."
(That is perfect in all of its incarnations forever and ever.)
vii.
It is just after seven that he finds the note.
He wakes from that memory to that song and he thinks of fate and her.
It hurts. It hurts like he can't breathe, and he wishes he could just die from the pain.
He stumbles back to the bathroom, seeking out aspirin for the headache he's pretending to have. It's as good an excuse as any to try to relieve an unsoothable pain. As he reaches the medicine cabinet, he has no choice but to face the mirror he's been avoiding because he's scared to see that pain living in his eyes (still doesn't want to acknowledge what it truly is). But instead of a haunted man, he sees the note.
"The only way I can be sure you'll see it," she laughed—how many times had she said that to him?
He can still hear the music. Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you… And fate…How is this not fate?
He plucks the note from the mirror and pretends his hands aren't trembling.
Tom,
I don't know what to say. I know I shouldn't leave like this, not after everything we did (and didn't) say tonight, but that's the truth. I don't know what to say. I'm trying to figure it out.
I want to see you again. I want to see you when we're not hurt and angry, but that's probably impossible. I'll settle for sober (last night was a mistake, wasn't it? I shouldn't have come over…not like that).
Next Friday…Meet me Radisson on Bleaker St. at eight? You know where.
If you don't come…Well then I guess there really is nothing left to say.
-L
viii.
But in your dreams, whatever they be, dream a little dream of me…