Rating: T
Summary: Carrie and Harrison say goodbye. Set in 1976.
Disclaimer: this is a real person fan fiction, so it all definitely came from my imagination and I'm not trying to offend anyone (you know the drill).
A/N: The poem in this is Carrie's, just to disclaim. Also, this is unbeta'd so all mistakes are mineeee. This one goes out to my girls Nor and Taylor for being hella cool and hella supportive.
Without further ado, I hope y'all enjoy and don't forget to tell me what you thought of it afterwards, I live off of your opinions.
**
"Hotshot?" her voice is muffled by the pillow that sleeps beneath her head. She rolls to her side and props her face on her hand. Her elbow digs a hole in the white feathers stained by last night's mascara. Her hair falls on the side of her face, travelling along the crook of her neck, stopping just below her shoulder.
"Yeah," his limbs crease the sheets as he turns around fully, towards her, their legs only mere inches apart. She smiles softly. Not softly as in blissful, a different kind of smile. An all too self-aware smile, a cautious smile. With that man, you could never be less than cautious.
"Have you ever told a story that didn't happen?" his brow furrows and his head falls back onto the pillow. "I mean, something you thought was true but that was just..." she added, seeing the quizzical expression of his face. "I don't know, a false memory." She finishes, her head, too, falling on her pillow. She watches the ceiling and gets lost in the shadows of the curtains blowing with the lenient breeze that blows.
"Hum, I don't think so." She closes her eyelids and curses herself. Now he surely must think she's odd.
"Well, I have." She blatantly states, half murmuring. His body resumes the usual position against hers, his mouth all too close to her ear.
"Tell me about it." He breathes. Its effect is mesmerizing – her lips curl upward as a reflex and one lengthy shiver shakes her small frame. Just like he predicted.
"I was seventeen and I was walking home alone." He nodded, kissing her neck. "And that night –" her voice wavers when he reaches her jawline. She swiftly rotates her head and catches his lips with hers. The kiss intensifies as he traps her bottom lip in his, breaking her heart and mending it back in a matter of seconds. As the kiss ceases, the room rejoices in its tepid peace, home to a breathless teen and her mature lover. He lays with his hand beneath his head, broadening his chest, racing her heart.
"And then?" he inquires, all the while not making eye contact.
"I saw a man in an alley with a knife to his chest, blood dripping from the open wound."
"Hum." He says. "And is that true?"
"I remember it, but I don't think it is because there was no record of it anywhere and when I looked the next day there was no blood in the alley." She shrugs and sits up on the bed, against the wooden bedframe. "I remember it vividly, but it didn't happen."
He sits up too, looking at her unswervingly. "Wasn't it a nightmare?"
"No." it's direct and it's assertive. "Be careful," she warns, a small hint of irony dancing its way through her words. "Dark things can always get darker."
He nods as if he's realized something, like everything suddenly makes sense.
"That's what you're pretending to be right now." She creases her brow and listens. "You're not dark, not really and you think that makes me like you more, like you're somehow less childish that way," he continues, his voice in a more rapid pace. "but you're wrong. I haven't seen the real you, but I would bet some good money that that darkness you talk so much about," he gestures with his hands "is nothing short of another lie."
She's rather shocked, but she shows nothing. Instead, she props her hand next to his thigh and whispers: "You want to see the real me?" and her eyes sparkle wickedly. "Take me against that wall."
He laughs and takes a cigarette from his bedside table, lighting it in one swift motion. "You don't mean that."
"Oh, but I do."
"Settle down, no one is taking anyone against no wall." He shakes his head and giggles to himself. She wastes no time and gets up, picking up his shirt from the floor and draping it around her frame.
"I'm so sick of this," she exhales, speaking to no one in particular. "I'm a good little girl, I'm a bad little girl," her gestures are big and overwhelming. She catches her breath and exclaims: "I'm not a little girl anymore!"
She stares into the abyss and the abyss stares back, none of them daring to disturb the shrill sound of the silence.
He gets up and walks in big strides towards her, handing her the cigarette, placing it in between her lips. She closes her eyes as he commands: "Ask me what my favorite time of day is."
"What is your favorite time of day?" she obeys, impassive.
"7 AM. No one bothers you at 7 AM." He answers without missing a beat. She ponders his response for a few seconds and ads:
"Ask me what my favorite time of day is." She mimics, as she walks past her lover and sits down on the edge of the bed, combing her hair absentmindedly.
"What is your favorite time of day?"
" 2 AM."
"Is that all?" he waits.
" 2 AM is for the lonely ones, for the writers," her gaze travels from his legs to his chest, stopping right at his hazel eyes. "It's for the ones who are loving but are not loved back."
Outside, the rumble of the cars, the screaming of adolescents rises in a clearer vibration. That slow murmur of a lazy city, that velvet air penetrates little by little in that uncomfortable room.
"So, you write?" he asks, genuinely fascinated.
"Well, yes." She states, matter-of-factly.
"Can I read?" he requests, although he's already made his way to her bag. He lifts it up as if asking for permission and she shrugs.
"Just read it aloud."
"Auctioning myself off to the lowest bidder
Going once, going twice
Gone
Sold to the man for the price of disdain
Some are sold for a song
I don't rate a refrain."
He sets the notebook down and immediately regrets picking it up. Why had he wanted to read that? It was too private, too deep into her mind. He couldn't believe that was what she thought of herself – nothing.
His face was vacant and hollow, like the sky when it's starless.
"Do you know Descartes?"
"Sure." She speaks, confused as to what the course their conversation had taken was.
"I think, therefore I am?" she nods and he walks around the room, feeling powerless without his shirt that she'd so unapologetically stolen. "You know where that came from?"
"Enlighten me, professor." She teases, managing a smile from his unemotional lips.
"Well, Descartes had to discover what the fundamental condition for existing was. And it is the act of thinking." His eyes light up, his body instantaneously needing to be close to hers again. He places his hands on her shoulders and asks: "Don't you see? What matters is what's within, your ideas, your writing, not the outside." She smiles and rejoices in the words he'd uttered just for her.
They're a still life watercolor of a still early morning, as the rain falls against the now closed window and the shadows bathe the room. They sit and drink their coffee on the living room couch now, couched in their silence, their meaninglessness like grains of sand washed up by the shore. Oh, how the ocean still roars. This, which would be the last of their hanging conversations, measures what's lost and what's yet to be lost. Two books without their book-ends.
"I have to pack, dear." As this term of endearment leaves her mouth, the first time it does, her heart sinks and it hides, it hides, it hides deep in the corner of the ends of her body.
"Sure, you..." he strokes her cheek. "You've got to go." She smiles apologetically and stares at him for a while, none of them moving an inch. Her eyes travel along his face, memorizing every freckle, every bump, every pigment. Oh, his scar.
A singular tear falls from her formerly dry eyes, taking his ingénue and tearing her apart.
"Goodbye, Silver Girl." He whispers, one last time.