My muse bit me! She bit me!

[impy]

It sucks in parts and I like other parts, but since I was trying to get it out of my head, I figure this will do. For now.
  Fireworks.
  Completely, totally, utterly fireworks.
  Perfection, really.
  If she could purr, she would. As it is, she's perfectly content to drift off to sleep with his arm draped across her waist. Just before she's lost for the night, she hears him whisper, "Marry me."
  Before she can think of anything else to say, she hears herself whisper back, "Okay." And then she's asleep.

  He wakes up in a panic. He can't figure out why at first. He slept really well, he's extremely comfortable, and there aren't any strange people in the room looking at them. Yet he's freaking out. Why?
  Okay.
  "Oh. Shit." His brain turns on the full scale alarm. Sirens are going off in his head and for a minute he thinks he might very well pass out. Which is odd, because as far back as he can recall, he's never panicked like this before. Ever. Especially not over something... Well, okay, maybe he's never had this exact problem before. Which could explain why the sirens are still going off and why his chest feels about ten sizes too small.
  He glances over at her to see if she's awake. Maybe she's panicking too. Then they'll laugh about it and everything will be o-fine. Everything will be fine. Not okay. Fine. Better than fine. Perfect would be nice.
  Instead, she's asleep. He's never seen her look so happy. Usually she looks ready to cry in her sleep. But she's smiling.
  Christ.
  He's tempted, and he knows this contradicts half the thoughts in his head, to lean over and kiss her forehead. He can't help it, there's something inside him that knows he has to touch her, but he also knows that if he does, she'll wake up. He knows this for a fact, despite years of evidence to the contrary. Maybe he's psychic. Maybe he's just afraid. Or maybe the panic attack will escalate if he touches her anymore than he already is.
  So he pulls his arm back slowly and then climbs out of bed, leaving her comfortably curled up in the covers. He slips into a pair of shorts and heads out into the living room to find the cordless phone. He has a call to make.
  "Hullo?" a grumpy voice manages to cough out before whispering for someone to hand her a cigarette.
  "I thought you quit," he finds himself saying with forced cheerfulness.
  "Fuck you," she says, the phone crackling with static. "I thought you knew better than to call me this early. It's not even noon. This had better be important."
  He'd planned on just dancing around the subject in an effort to figure it out on his own first, but that plan goes out the window the moment he opens his mouth. Kind of like how he got into this mess in the first place...
  "I think I just asked Tina to marry me," he says.
  "What? Jesus! Congratulations! Hey, guys! ... Wait. What do you mean you think you asked her? You either did or you didn't. It's like being pregnant. You can't be a little... Christ, is she pregnant? Oh my God. I need a drink."
  "Whoa. No, God, no. I don't think so. Her being pregnant, I mean. I don't think she is. Oh God, don't say something like that."
  "Then what is it? How do you not know whether you asked her or not, and why do you sound like you're having a heart attack?"
  "Are you sure you haven't already had a couple of drinks?" he mutters.
  "Yeah, well, it's my weekend off."
  "It's Wednesday."
  "Fuck. You. Now, tell me the whole sordid story. And for the love of God, could someone get me a fucking cigarette before I collapse over here?"
  So he tells her, glossing over some of the more interesting aspects, namely the fireworks aspect of the evening. "And just as I was falling asleep, I think I said 'marry me.' And she said yes. Or okay. Or maybe both. I don't remember."
  "That hardly sounds like a proposal," Lynn points out.
  "I said marry me. She said yes. I think it counts."
  "Only if she remembers. I've had entire conversations with Tina when she's about ten seconds away from sleep and I don't think she remembers a one of them."
  "Well, there is that..."
  "So. You don't want to marry her?"
  "Yes. No. Wait..."
  "Okay, now I'm sure you're the one drinking too early."
  "I want to. Someday. I think. But..."
  "So have an extraordinarily long engagement. I think that was Tina's plan when we used to talk about it."
  His heart stopped. They'd talked about this? Oh, Jesus. Of course they did. Girls and weddings.
  "Of course we were thirteen and the plan, for her anyway, was to draw out the engagement as long as humanly possible so as to avoid the actual wedding."
  He could breathe again. He didn't know them when they were thirteen. On the other hand, he couldn't help but feel disappointed for some reason.
  "Now. Why the freak out? Because as far as I can tell, you two seem to be the only ones who haven't seen this coming. You want to marry her, someday, and she's not likely to want to drag you to the altar anytime soon, so what's the problem?"
  "I don't want to divorce her."
  For a second the only sounds he hears are the static of the phone and the clink-clink of the ice in the freezer dropping into the ice bin. And then Lynn begins to laugh. Minutes pass and she's still at it.
  "What the fuck is so funny?"
  "Jackass. You have to marry the girl before you can divorce her, and since you seem to be hung up on the idea you might have asked her, and she might have said yes... I don't think that'll be a problem."
  "I'm serious."
  The laughter dies off. They're both thinking of his parents' messy divorce. And then they think of her parents' divorce.
  "Point taken. But you can't just assume that's how you two will end up. Then you will. The power of negative thinking."
  "But you can't just ignore the fact that it's a possibility. Statistically speaking-"
  "Screw that. I'm not saying you should marry the girl anytime soon, or that you shouldn't, but you've got some serious issues, man, and that hasn't scared her off yet. Talk to her, not me. With your luck she doesn't remember any of this or you dreamed the whole thing."
  "You're not really helping," he grumbles.
  "Yes, I am. You just don't want to hear what I have to say."
  She's right. It doesn't happen often, but when it does...
  Arms slip around him and he feels his body falling backwards into Tina. She takes the phone from his hand and says, "Don't know what you two are talking about, but I'm stealing him away. Go back to sleep, Lynn." She hangs up without even waiting to hear Lynn try to explain that she's just stumbled into something that could very well be a minefield.
  "How'd you know that was Lynn? It could have been my mother," he tells her.
  She kisses his cheek and grins. "I'm psychic. Besides, you always have the volume turned up so loud on that phone that I could hear everything she said."
  He turns his head so he can look at her. Her smile is still there, but now it's a little forced, and he knows she's trying hard to resist the urge to pull away from him. Instinct.
  "How much did you hear?"
  "Not everything." Translation: Enough.
  He sighs and pulls away from her even as part of his brain screams that he's being a moron. "Oh."
  "So, what is it you're supposed to talk to me about? What didn't you dream? Why do you look like someone just killed your best friend?" Her emotional pain radar is going off so loudly he can hear it in his head.
  He manages to meet her eyes and for a minute he can't think. He just stares at her and he finally understands what those people in movies mean when they say you can see your future in someone else's eyes if you know when and where to look. There are a million possibilities there and he's afraid of every single one.
  "What do you remember about last night?" he asks when he's able to breathe again.
  She turns six shades of red and smirks, then shrugs. "What part of last night, exactly?"
  "The part where I said 'marry me'?"
  "Oh. That."
  "So I didn't dream it and you do remember."
  She laughs then. "Lemme guess. Lynn tried to convince you I never remember anything someone says when I'm falling asleep? God, I've repeated to her, word for word, things she's told me, and yet she still believes that I'm dead to the world then. No. I remember, and you didn't dream it. Unless you're dreaming this too."
  "I wish. It might make this easier."
  She reaches out to him and before he can move away, pulls him close to her. So close that he can feel her heart beating. "I figured you were kidding. I'm not holding you to it," she says.
  She's giving him a way out. The easy, painless way out. She might even mean it.
  "But I did mean it."
  Her heartbeat suddenly goes haywire. "Then what's the problem?"
  "I don't want us to end up like..." his voice trails off. If he doesn't say it, maybe it'll go away.
  "Your parents," she finishes for him, because it has to be said.
  "I don't want to hate you."
  "Then don't. Not everyone ends up like your parents did. Or Lynn's. Or whoever else you're thinking of."
  He shrugs and wishes he could make her understand, or, hell, right now he'd settle for understanding himself. "It's not that simple."
  "Of course not. That would be too easy."
  And so it goes, around and around. Nothing she can say will magically make him feel better, and nothing he can say is going to make her understand just how much the idea of the two of them spending the rest of their lives hating each other freaks him out.
  Minutes pass and words float through the air and then minutes turn into an hour and she finally throws her hands up in the air.
  "I give. You win. Despite the fact that we have obvious warning signs various other people have put up for us to learn from, and the fact that we've managed to live together freakishly well for more than a year, we're obviously destined for doom simply because you think so. Which is fine, honestly. Let me know when we hit ruin. Maybe we can get matching shirts. I'm tired of this."
  "I didn't want to win," he mutters.
  "Then stop this. Stop worrying so much. Last time I checked neither one of us was dying, so there's no point in acting like this all has to be solved today. We seemed pretty happy yesterday, and as far as I can tell, nothing has changed. Except the fact that you seemed to be hung up on a possibility."
  She leans forward and kisses him because nothing else has worked. "That? That would be reality. I love you. Another reality. I have loved you since I met you. Still reality. Even when we couldn't talk to one another without fighting or trying to hurt each other? Still loved you. Still reality. It's not going to change. Trust me." She stands up and walks towards the bedroom.
  He stares after her and can't help but remember the first time he realized he was going to die. He was six years old and he'd just been sent to bed and for some reason something in his head clicked. One day I won't exist anymore. What happens when you die? He spent all night worrying about it. He'd worked himself into a real state of panic before he'd finally realized he could spend the rest of his life freaking out about the thought that one day he'd die... or he could get over it. For the most part, he got over it.
  Before he could manage to slide back into full blown panic attack, he followed her into their room. "You win."

  She sits staring out a window at an oak tree that's covered in moss. In the corner, a clock ticks the seconds away and other than a pencil scratching something down on a notepad, it's the only sound.
  "Is that it?" her shrink finally asks.
  Without looking away from the window, she nods. "One other thing. He died a week later."
  The pencil snaps. She wasn't expecting that.
  "Your mother never mentioned any of this when we spoke. Does she know?"
  She shrugs. "Probably not. Does it matter? It doesn't change anything. We were happy, then he wasn't, then we were happy again and then he died. It doesn't matter if she knew. Forever and ever and ever, amen didn't last too long."
  No matter what the shrink asks, she won't say anything else. She's tired and she wants to go home. She misses her music, she misses no one expecting her to say anything, and most of all she misses not having to actively think about him. It hurts too much. Everything hurts too much.
  Marry me. For real this time.

Comments

[mystalkershrine.livejournal.com]

Ooh that's sooo tragic and so beautiful! GO YOU IMPA!! :D:D:D:D ({) You're a fantastic writer :D

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

*blushes three shades of red* Fankoo muchly. :)