Bowing Out
Title: Bowing Out
Rating: PG 13
Pairing: Pete/Ashlee
Summary: It’s masochistic to watch her load the last of her bags into her car and pull out of the driveway, but he does, he watches and he swears something more base and powerful and deep than his heart rends in two, some part lost with her.
A/N: I'm not sure where this came from.
Word Count: 955
Aching limbs and bruised heart and smudged purple blue under his eyes. He needs a hand to hold and her smile and neither is forthcoming. She looks like she feels bad for hurting him, but how could she be. Heartless. Heartless and beautiful as ever.
She’s the singular most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Not even the crumpled, tattered, dirty remains of his heart that she grinds under her heel as she turns on it and leaves can bring themselves to deny that.
She’s the morning sky and the evening stars and the brightest day of summer and the colour of the leaves in autumn and every other sickening cliché beauty people seem to admire. Except she’s better and she’s more perfect and she’s, she’s leaving.
He wants to call her back. He wants to sing her songs dancing across bleachers and make her love him, like the boys in the movies. But he’s not a boy anymore, and she’s not some sappy girl from a story, she’s real and so much better and worth so much more. She’s too good for him, far too good and his heart aches without her there.
His limbs will not move of their own accord, he sternly tells them he needs to stop watching her leave him or his tattered heart will be no more than dust, but he hasn’t the strength to demand even that with conviction.
It’s masochistic to watch her load the last of her bags into her car and pull out of the driveway, but he does, he watches and he swears something more base and powerful and deep than his heart rends in two, some part lost with her. He imagines it like some dented can attached on string to the back of the wedding car, trailing behind it, scraping against the tarmac and wearing down to pieces, but attached nonetheless, unable to get away. He wonders if she can hear its rusty clatter as she drives away, can hear the part of him she drags dying in her wake. He somehow hopes she can’t.
Bitter as he feels, he doesn’t want to think that she could feel even half the pain that is clamping down around him right now, forcing pressure in that’s making his heart feel as though it’s in his throat. If she were hurting half as much as him, he’d go to the ends of the earth to make her smile, trailing forlorn back to her like a kicked puppy.
He is pathetic. She doesn’t want him, she doesn’t care. She doesn’t want them. Oh god his head is spinning like a top. Let this be a nightmare, like the ones that make him fear sleep and avoid it like the plague. Let it be a terrible dream that she’ll soothe away with kisses and sleepy murmurs and gentle touches when he wakes up. He closes his eyes tight; he closes them tight and tells himself again and again to wake up, to wake up and to make it all okay again. The twisting feeling in his gut tells him he’s a fool. No pain could feel this real in a dream.
Nothing can feel real. He’s had the rug pulled from under his feet and suddenly he can see the sky as it is, not the picture he was looking at before. It’s not pretty and perfect and blue, it’s grey and it’s about to rain. And there’s nobody there to dance with him or sing cheesy songs about it. Was there ever? Was she ever really there and really his? Was the entire relationship something he imagined? Was something so perfect as her even real? He feels so bereft of her presence she surely must have been, but she could be his Tyler Durden. If he put a gun to his head, would it be clear? Would she become a fragile story made up in his head, or would he just blow his own brains out?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t do a thing. He stands there on his own doorstep like a stranger. He daren’t walk back into his own home. It’s like a stage set up for their lives, but the play is over, he shouldn’t be there, he’s not a player in it anyone. The curtain’s closed and the audience are gone. There will be the critics who say it was all a disaster from the start. The fans who claim it a beautiful tragedy and make him out the tragic hero. He never wanted it to end. But she wrote the end into the script and never gave him the final draft.
Without her, he’s lost. It’s not that he can’t live, but that he has no raison d’être. A man who has seen heaven will never be content on earth, for it will pale so cruelly in comparison. He doesn’t know what he did wrong to be barred from her, but the way his smile seems lost between her and now and his heart seems to be smearing the floor, well, it doesn’t matter what he did wrong, or if he even did, only that she’s gone. Ever sluggish, reluctant beat in his chest echoes gone. Gone, gone, gone. He can’t do this without her.
They say that in this world, there is someone for everyone, or something like that. He steps inside his own house like a stranger and leaves his heart dirty and broken on the doorstep where she dropped it like an old toy. But, he realises, dropping his eyes to the ring still on his finger, just because he was meant to be with her, does not mean she was meant to be with him.
Rating: PG 13
Pairing: Pete/Ashlee
Summary: It’s masochistic to watch her load the last of her bags into her car and pull out of the driveway, but he does, he watches and he swears something more base and powerful and deep than his heart rends in two, some part lost with her.
A/N: I'm not sure where this came from.
Word Count: 955
Aching limbs and bruised heart and smudged purple blue under his eyes. He needs a hand to hold and her smile and neither is forthcoming. She looks like she feels bad for hurting him, but how could she be. Heartless. Heartless and beautiful as ever.
She’s the singular most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Not even the crumpled, tattered, dirty remains of his heart that she grinds under her heel as she turns on it and leaves can bring themselves to deny that.
She’s the morning sky and the evening stars and the brightest day of summer and the colour of the leaves in autumn and every other sickening cliché beauty people seem to admire. Except she’s better and she’s more perfect and she’s, she’s leaving.
He wants to call her back. He wants to sing her songs dancing across bleachers and make her love him, like the boys in the movies. But he’s not a boy anymore, and she’s not some sappy girl from a story, she’s real and so much better and worth so much more. She’s too good for him, far too good and his heart aches without her there.
His limbs will not move of their own accord, he sternly tells them he needs to stop watching her leave him or his tattered heart will be no more than dust, but he hasn’t the strength to demand even that with conviction.
It’s masochistic to watch her load the last of her bags into her car and pull out of the driveway, but he does, he watches and he swears something more base and powerful and deep than his heart rends in two, some part lost with her. He imagines it like some dented can attached on string to the back of the wedding car, trailing behind it, scraping against the tarmac and wearing down to pieces, but attached nonetheless, unable to get away. He wonders if she can hear its rusty clatter as she drives away, can hear the part of him she drags dying in her wake. He somehow hopes she can’t.
Bitter as he feels, he doesn’t want to think that she could feel even half the pain that is clamping down around him right now, forcing pressure in that’s making his heart feel as though it’s in his throat. If she were hurting half as much as him, he’d go to the ends of the earth to make her smile, trailing forlorn back to her like a kicked puppy.
He is pathetic. She doesn’t want him, she doesn’t care. She doesn’t want them. Oh god his head is spinning like a top. Let this be a nightmare, like the ones that make him fear sleep and avoid it like the plague. Let it be a terrible dream that she’ll soothe away with kisses and sleepy murmurs and gentle touches when he wakes up. He closes his eyes tight; he closes them tight and tells himself again and again to wake up, to wake up and to make it all okay again. The twisting feeling in his gut tells him he’s a fool. No pain could feel this real in a dream.
Nothing can feel real. He’s had the rug pulled from under his feet and suddenly he can see the sky as it is, not the picture he was looking at before. It’s not pretty and perfect and blue, it’s grey and it’s about to rain. And there’s nobody there to dance with him or sing cheesy songs about it. Was there ever? Was she ever really there and really his? Was the entire relationship something he imagined? Was something so perfect as her even real? He feels so bereft of her presence she surely must have been, but she could be his Tyler Durden. If he put a gun to his head, would it be clear? Would she become a fragile story made up in his head, or would he just blow his own brains out?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t do a thing. He stands there on his own doorstep like a stranger. He daren’t walk back into his own home. It’s like a stage set up for their lives, but the play is over, he shouldn’t be there, he’s not a player in it anyone. The curtain’s closed and the audience are gone. There will be the critics who say it was all a disaster from the start. The fans who claim it a beautiful tragedy and make him out the tragic hero. He never wanted it to end. But she wrote the end into the script and never gave him the final draft.
Without her, he’s lost. It’s not that he can’t live, but that he has no raison d’être. A man who has seen heaven will never be content on earth, for it will pale so cruelly in comparison. He doesn’t know what he did wrong to be barred from her, but the way his smile seems lost between her and now and his heart seems to be smearing the floor, well, it doesn’t matter what he did wrong, or if he even did, only that she’s gone. Ever sluggish, reluctant beat in his chest echoes gone. Gone, gone, gone. He can’t do this without her.
They say that in this world, there is someone for everyone, or something like that. He steps inside his own house like a stranger and leaves his heart dirty and broken on the doorstep where she dropped it like an old toy. But, he realises, dropping his eyes to the ring still on his finger, just because he was meant to be with her, does not mean she was meant to be with him.