REVAMPED AS OF APRIL 2014
"Hello?"
"Carmen, turn on your radio – AM 1150."
Carmen looked over at the clock and realized that it was only five in the morning – why was Robert Wallace calling her? They hadn't spoken for about three weeks now, save for the occasional brief work-related email, and suddenly, he was up before the sun, calling her as though someone had died. When he phone rang in her sleep, she immediately rolled over to answer it. Rob's voice had been the surprise. When he immediately gave her directions to turn to a particular radio station, she sleepily reached over and flicked the switch on her clock radio, turning the manual dial on the cheap piece to 1150, where the local newscaster's voice crackled through the harsh static.
"Still no further information on the mysterious murder of a man by the name of Daniel Bartlett in the small town of Tashmore Lake. Bartlett was found at approximately midnight, dead in his vehicle –"
Carmen rubbed her eyes and sat upright, her face now set in deep concern. Still holding the phone at one ear, she turned up the volume on the stereo.
"—local sources suggest that Sheriff Newsome of Tashmore Lake may suspect a link to a string of murders in late 2004."
"I know you hate my guts right now, but I thought you needed a heads up," Rob said finally. "Consider it a peace offering. If your boyfriend's innocent, and I'm sure you'll insist he is, you might need to make sure he's prepared with an airtight alibi."
"He's not here."
There was a brief silence, and Carmen knew it meant that Rob was considering saying something that would upset her but was talking himself out of it - it a strange way, it was nice of him.
"Look, I'm not trying to suggest anything," Rob said tiredly. "And I still have a ton of work to get to today once I've had some coffee. I just wanted to make sure this didn't blindside you because I'm your friend, and I know that you care about this guy. Okay?"
"Okay," Carmen said, taking a few deep breaths. "Thanks, Rob."
"Anytime."
Upon hanging up, Carmen felt a suffocating sense of worry settle around her - Mort would obviously be the first person that Newsome pointed at when something like this happened, and Newsome would pursue it with extreme prejudice unless he was proven right or wrong conclusively. Carmen hopped into the shower to try and wake herself up enough to make sense of things, but instead found herself standing in the shower stall until her hands became pitted and pruny - she still had no better ideas. Instead, after a good forty-five minutes, she heard her phone ring again, and she immediately leapt out of the shower, wrapping herself in a towel o go answer.
"Hello?"
"Morning Miss Anderson. Did I wake you?"
Carmen fought the urge to gulp when she heard Sheriff Newsome's voice on the line. "No," she said in as pleasant a voice as she could muster. "No, I'm usually up before the sun. What can I do for you?"
"I just came to give you fair warning that I'd be dropping by to speak with you today," he said. "After I've spoken to Mister Rainey. I'm planning on heading over after these last few press briefings I agreed to down here in town. You've heard about Mister Bartlett?"
"Heard it on the radio just a while ago," Carmen said, briefly rattled by the confirmation that she had been right to suspect the Sheriff would think of Mort first. "Sheriff Newsome, sir. I'm really sorry to hear about... about Daniel Bartlett. Mort and I will do anything to help. It'd probably be better if you came straight here, so Mort doesn't have to bother hurrying home. "
"Excuse me?"
"Oh!" Carmen said, feigning surprise. "He's upstairs in the bathroom right now - I don't think he's heard the radio this morning yet, though, I woke up much earlier than he did."
"Mort Rainey is with you?"
"Well, yes, he spent the night," Carmen lied smoothly. "But like I said, we're both just washing up now, so anytime you're ready to head on over, we're more than happy to help you with anything you'd like to speak with us about."
Sheriff Newsome was obviously thrown for a loop, and Carmen could tell precisely what he was assuming - it was what she had wanted him to assume. He mumbled a few obligatory niceties before hanging up the phone. Carmen, however, barely remained disconnected for two seconds before immediately dialing Mort's number.
"Hmm...hello?" Mort answered groggily.
"No time to explain - don't shower, don't wash up, come over right now," Carmen said urgently. "It's important. Please."
She hung up immediately and began pacing, muttered to herself and shaking her head. She had lied. She had just lied to the Sheriff, and now she had to stick to her story. After nearly ten minutes of complete, utter confusion, she ran upstairs and changed out of her flannel pajamas into a shirt - one of Mort's shirts that he had left when his washing machine had broken and he had to do laundry at her place. She pulled her hair out of its messy bun and tousled it with her fingers before hurrying downstairs.
Upon returning to the living room, she found that Mort had already let himself in and was leaning against the back of the sofa, still clad in his bathrobe and pajama pants - she'd given him her spare key just over a week ago - and was regarding her state of dress in complete surprise.
"Let me explain," Carmen said, holding her hands up as she hurried to stand in front of Mort. "Daniel Bartlett was just found murdered. Danny Boy from the store. I heard it on the radio - he was found dead in his car." She moved over to the sofa bed and threw an extra blanket and pillows on it messing it up by tossing and fluffing them around. "The Sheriff just called me and said that he was coming to talk to you."
"Are you kidding me?!" Mort said in outrage. "Then - then I need to go back home, I need to figure out exactly what I was doing when the guy was killed. I need to go-"
"No. You don't need to go anywhere, you need to stay right here, or else I am going to be in deep shit. Deep shit." Carmen snapped. "I didn't know what else to say to the sheriff, and I'm sorry, but I told him- -"
"You told him what?" Mort asked carefully.
"I told him you spent the night here. All night," she said, raising her eyebrows gently, and the suggestion was not lost on Mort, who cleared his throat to try and dispel the look of surprise on his face.
"I don't -"
"I said you spent the night, and I know what he assumes that means - hence, this," Carmen said, gesturing down over her clothes and at the room which she had purposely mussed up for the purposes of maintaining the ruse. "Because this is better than you saying you were alone all night, at home, with no one to vouch for you. Even if I believe you to the moon and back, Sheriff Newsome never will."
Mort looked at Carmen in a mixture of shock, confusion, and admiration. "You... could get into a hell of a lot of trouble lying for me," he said carefully, and suddenly, he didn't even need the other voice in his head to nag him that he was dragging Carmen through dirt she had no business being dragged through. "You could get into very, very serious trouble -"
"Which is why you need to make this believable, okay?" Carmen said calmly, crossing her arms over herself. Truth be told, she didn't care about the lie. She didn't care about the insinuation that she and Mort had taken things to the next level, because to say that she hadn't thought about it would be an outright lie. And since they were putting on the ruse anyway...
"So, I need you to do something," she said carefully. "I need you to just - stay still and..."
Mort nearly jumped away in surprised when suddenly, her lips were on his neck. His eyes fluttered shut, and admittedly, he lost track of his intention to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing, because that would require her to stop doing it. When she finally pulled away, she glanced at his neck appraisingly, her lips pursed in thought.
"You just gave me a hickey."
"Well, it's more believable if I do it," Carmen said matter-of-factly. "Because I'm the younger one - I'm the incorrigible temptress who had you spend the night, remember?" she asked with a smirk. Mort chuckled, though in all honesty he could still feel his heart racing a little. His relationship with Carmen, up until this point, had been surprisingly chaste. While they were both adults, and far from inexperienced if they were being totally honest, they had been unusually desperate to avoid any semblance of rushing anything, and as such had taken things at a snail's pace despite the assumption to the contrary of most of Tashmore Lake.
Mort leaned over to kiss her, and this time, deepened the kiss - he made to part her lips with his tongue, nipping gently at her lower lip. Carmen let out a small gasp and snaked her arms up to encircle behind Mort's neck. He pulled away and smirked briefly before his lips traveled down to the soft skin on Carmen's neck. He raked his teeth gently over the soft curve of her neck into her shoulder. She let out a quiet yelp and stared at Mort questioningly.
"Unfair. You can't be the only one who looks insatiable - I have a beautiful girlfriend, and she looks like I haven't laid a hand on her," he chuckled. Carmen laughed a little as well, and for a moment, the pair simply laughed, their arms wrapped around each other as though all of their problems were left behind. Then, however, there was a knock on the door. Carmen's eyes widened briefly, but she let go of Mort quickly, hurrying to answer the door.
"Morning, Sheriff," she said - she noticed the surprised expression on his face at her lack of pants, and the fact that Mort was in fact standing behind her.
"Morning Miss Anderson. Mister Rainey," he said, tipping his hat. "May I come in?"
"Of course! Sure, sure," Carmen nodded, ushering him inside. "I'm sorry, I didn't have time to get changed, we weren't expecting you to get here for a short while yet."
"I can see that," Sheriff Newsome said, eyeing Carmen distastefully. Mort bristled at the realization that the old man was clearly judging the woman very harshly, but Mort knew he was in no position to say anything about it. Carmen, however, seemed not to care in the least.
"It's horrible what happened to Mister Bartlett," she said, sitting down on the sofa and carefully crossing her legs at the ankles. Mort followed suit, sitting on her other side and draping an arm around her so that she sat between him and the Sheriff.
Very chivalrous, use the woman as a human shield.
"Yes. Yes, it's terrible - Mr. Bartlett was a good man," Newsome said, and Carmen, squeezed Mort's hand to fight back the urge to vomit. Daniel Bartlett had been a creep, and while perhaps he hadn't deserved to die, Carmen couldn't say with any amount of honesty that she'd miss his presence in town. "I'll get to the point, you two. I need to know definitively where you two were last night."
Carmen glanced over her shoulder at Mort and gave a very uncharacteristic, coquettish laugh for a brief moment - she had something up her sleeve - before looking back at the Sheriff. "Well, you see, I wasn't planning on having Mort over, but his stove has been making his weird smell. It's rancid. He hasn't cleaned the burners in ages," she said honestly, and Mort shrugged with a lopsided grin. The woman was good, there was no doubt of it.
"So he came over and I had already made lasagna, so he stuck around," Carmen shrugged, nodding over to the tray of lasagna on the dining table - Mort had to keep from snorting laughter at the fact that apparently, Carmen had eaten enough lasagna for two then night before. "So we had dinner, and we watched the Rocky and Bulwinkle marathon - that was on from about ten until two." Another truth - and the Sheriff could have checked her cable records if he wanted to. She had been up proofreading pieces that Rob had sent over, and had found the background noise from the cartoons helpful.
"And then?"
"And then we... played Monopoly."
"Monopoly?"
"Yeah," Carmen said, laughing and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "It was an... adult version. I ran out of money, so..." her voice trailed off, and glanced down at her lack of clothing. "Obviously he won."
At this point, Mort encircled an arm around Carmen's waist, following her lead, and she swatted his hand away playfully and mouth the word, 'later', pretending that she hadn't meant for the Sheriff to see. She could just hear the thoughts in his head - disdainful thoughts about these promiscuous, liberated city girls. But the important part was that he seemed to be buying it. There was no reason not to.
"I think I've heard enough," he said with a tight-lipped smile. "I'm sorry to have... bothered the two of you."
"No bother at all!" Carmen said brightly. "My God, I'm so embarrassed - I really wish I'd had a little more time to clean up."
"No - no, it's no problem. You two... have a good day."
And he tipped his hat again, leaving them in the house. The instant they heard him drive off into the distance, Carmen finally let down the fake smile she had plastered onto her face and slumped tiredly against the couch, leaning her head onto Mort's shoulder. "That was a close call."
"I can't believe you did that," Mort said, reaching out and running his fingers gently through Carmen's tousled hair. No one else would have ever done that for him, Mort thought to himself. He felt thankful, and at the same time, terrible. The voice in his head had said he would get her in trouble and this was as troublesome as it got. She'd lied for him - to the Sheriff. She had committed a crime for him, and had done so without a second thought.
You're really gonna let her go down this rabbit hole? If you really care about her -
"Hey," Carmen interrupted, noticing Mort lost in his own thoughts again. "I'd do it again if I had to. You deserve peace."
"Mm..."
"Hey," Carmen repeated, placing her hand on Mort's cheek so he couldn't look away from her again. "If it wasn't obvious before, I want this to work. I want us to work. And if I need to play tricks on the biggest, baddest Sheriff in town in order to do that, I'm going to - because I don't take kindly to not getting what I want," she smirked. Mort laughed, gently shutting his eyes and shaking his head. She was definitely a piece of work.
"I can't believe you did that -"
"I run - I ran an arts and entertainment magazine," Carmen pointed out, raising her eyebrows. "Did you think I sold copies by telling the truth all the time?"
"Point taken. How did you know about Bartlett so early?" he asked, attempting to dispel the sense of guilt he'd been wracked with for the past few minutes. "You hate talk radio in the mornings. You nearly kicked in my car stereo when I left it on - when we went into town to pick up paper towels?" he pointed out.
"Rob called and told me to turn on the radio. He warned me," Carmen explained. She paused and sighed a little, reaching out for one of Mort's hands again. "He really is a good friend, he wants the best for me. He wants me to be happy. I really wish you and he could get along."
Mort still had to actively remind himself that Rob was not Ted - but it helped now that it was very clear how different Carmen was from Amy. Maybe it was something he could at least try. "He wants you happy, I want you happy - I don't see anything for us to not get along over."
Carmen let out a sigh of relief and leaned over, resting her forehead against Mort's. "Thank you," she said, her voice sounding tired but at the same time, so pleased at this development that Mort couldn't find it in himself to hold it against her that she was asking for him to get along with her ex. After what she had just done for him, it was a small favor after all.
The rest of the day seemed to tick on like a normal day, though Carmen was guilty of occasionally switching on the local news while Mort was in another room to try and catch if any new developments had come up regarding Daniel Bartlett's death. Nothing. No leads.
Mort gave his most valiant efforts at distracting Carmen throughout the day, feeling almost completely responsible for the fact that she was so stressed over this business - she didn't have to do it, he told himself in attempts to assuage his own sense of guilt. The idea that she could have just washed her hands of the whole thing and instead chose to help him, however, only managed to make him feel worse.
He tried to cook her lunch, but found himself so rusty in the kitchen that it turned into dinner while she waited and watched television on the couch, her laptop perched on her lap as she browsed through a file of sample layouts Rob had sent over for their big Memorial Day issue. Mort even managed a forced 'tell him I said hello' over the phone to Rob when he called to clarify a couple of emails.
You want him gone.
Mort rolled his eyes at the nagging voice in his head. "No. Carmen likes having him around, as a friend," he muttered as he attempted to cut an onion at least more skillfully than a five-year-old. "He's a - a decent human being."
He's not a Ted, you mean.
"Right. Not a Ted."
After finally managing to throw together dinner on his own, despite Carmen's attempts to peer into the kitchen and help, Mort brought out a slightly burnt meatloaf and mashed potatoes to the dining table, presenting them with a flourish. "I'm sure the burnt parts have some kind of nutritional value. It's what I've always told myself," he chuckled while Carmen took a seat at the table.
"It looks great," she laughed, shaking her head - he glanced at the TV and saw that she had been watching an old VHS copy of a black-and-white Audrey Hepburn movie. Roman Holiday. So, she was a romantic.
Over dinner tonight, Mort noticed for the first time just how vibrant Carmen really was - or, rather, he finally managed to come up with that particular word to describe her. The way she didn't sculpt her laughter to try and still look pretty - the way she still looked pretty anyway... the way she was sometimes filled with such a vivid idea of something in her own mind that she had to describe it with sounds instead of words, the way she talked about her work, the way she talked about anything at all... vibrant. For the first time, he actually felt words coming back to him at all, and a few times during dinner, he had to pause and scribble down an interesting phrase or two on a paper towel as they came to him. It had been so long since anything came to him that way.
And suddenly, while Carmen was halfway through bringing a bit of meatloaf to her mouth, three words in particular came to Mort, tumbling out before he had the opportunity to censor them.
"I love you."
Carmen froze and lowered her fork back down to her plate, looking at Mort with a wide-eyed expression, and he mirrored it once he actually realized what he had said. "Wow," he muttered, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. "Sorry, I - uh... too soon?"
"N-no! No, it's not - it's..." Carmen stammered, attempting to regain some semblance of composure. "I - I love you. Too. I love you too," she said with a nervous laugh.
She loved him. She loved him. How long had it been since anyone had said that to him? He raised his eyebrows questioningly as though seeking out confirmation that he'd heard correctly, that she didn't want to change her answer. When her only response was a nervous smile, he let out a relieved laugh and reached out for her hand, clasping it tightly.
"Wow," he said, shaking his head incredulously. "So. We're there huh?"
"Yeah," Carmen laughed. "We're there."
Being there with someone, Mort decided, was a place that he had missed being - more than he would have cared to admit when the possibility was not yet presented to him. After dinner, he sat down on the sofa bed comfortably with Carmen - the woman he loved - and finished the rest of Roman Holiday with her. As the credits began rolling, he glanced over and realized that she had dozed off on his shoulder with no semblance of stirring.
Towards the end of things with Amy - Mort hated that his mind always drifted here - even before Ted, Mort had to admit he had started feeling old. Not physically - he wasn't old and rickety by any means. But he had already started feeling a lowness and a weariness after Amy had lost the baby that until now, he had never felt able to shake. As he finally dozed off, he posited to himself that Carmen was something like a Muse, like someone that brought vibrance back into his life. And she had come just in time.
It startled Mort greatly that when he woke in the middle of the night, still on the sofa bed, Carmen was gone. The front door and the back door were both shut, but there was no sound of rustling or movement coming from anywhere in the living room. He got up and plodded barefoot across the floor to the kitchen - no movement either.
How funny.
"What's funny?" he muttered to himself in the darkness as he made his way towards the stairs.
You say I love you, she disappears.
"I don't appreciate the insinuation," he whispered shortly. He noticed that the hatch to the attic, which was perched atop a rickety staircase, was opened. He took a deep breath, hoping that he would find Carmen - just Carmen and no surprises. He climbed up and saw a shadow sitting on the floor next to the triangular window. Carmen was sitting up quietly, staring outside.
The old feeling of guilt crept up on Mort again - today had probably been overwhelming for her, and he'd hardly even acknowledged it. It was getting to her, he posited, or it wouldn't be keeping up at night. He quietly moved over and sat down behind her, and she flinched in surprise when he gently placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey," he said gently. "You know all this bullshit with the Sheriff, with the corn field - you know that's all for me to stress over, right? I've been dealing with this since before you came around, and you didn't ask to get dragged into it."
"I knew about it before I decided I wanted to be with you," she said calmly, still staring out the window. "It's not about that. It's just..."
"If this is gonna work, I can't just be 'that guy who gives you grey hairs'," Mort said, gently wrapping his arms around her from behind. "So, can you just relax for once and let me not be useless?"
Carmen was about to protest that he wasn't useless at all, but before she could speak up, Mort's hands traveled to the small of her back, kneading small circles into the tension she hadn't even realized was there. She let out a small sound - not quite a moan, almost a whimper - and for whatever reason, the tiny noise was enough to make Mort's breath catch in his throat. His hands froze momentarily, and suddenly, his palms were roving gently over her waist. His lips descended onto the curve of her neck, and this time, she let out a small, audible gasp. This time, it didn't cause Mort to stop, but rather to pull her closer, to kiss her neck more fervently. Almost in a blur, she turned around, and Mort closed his hands around her arms, pulling her onto his lap while her legs settled on either side of him. The sudden closeness that came from her legs being around his waist felt almost foreign, and his hands moved down her body to her thighs, his fingers digging gently and urgently into the soft skin. Her mouth lowered onto his, and he instinctively ground his hips against hers.
"Are- are we doing this?" he asked breathlessly, breaking the kiss only long enough to get the words out. She nodded quickly before her hands moved to unbutton his pajama top - but he wanted to hear it. He pulled away with reluctance, and he rested his forehead against hers, awaiting an answer. Her hair, dark and silky in the moonlight leaking in from the window, fell like a curtain over both of them, and she gave him a small smile.
"We're doing this..."
Original A/N's
Well, the story's kind of starting to take shape. It's not a formless blob of words and snogging, right? anyone forgotten who Daniel Bartlett was? The semi-pervy guy from the diner a few chappies back? Okeeday
blackcharityflint: haha, don't worry. random ramblings are my specialty. I don't mind at all. I LOVE randomnees, harhar. BTW, which 'hard-to-fimd' Johnny Depp movies did you pick up? I wanan start a big collection myself, haha
lordoftheringsfanficreader: Ahhh, it's okay if you can't think of anything. I'll think of more things to mix into this story. Still plenty left...I think
Kurama13: Awwww, you don't fancy Rob? Well, maybe the poor guy's on his way to redeeming himself, eh?
Dawnie-7: glad to hear that the argument I staged between Carmen and Rob last chapter wasn't too outlandish. I mean, maybe people saw it coming. Only two peopel who've dated each other can fight like that.
Adios! Til next time!