Comment Fic Post
you can't rest your head (The Good Wife; Alicia/Will, Alicia/Peter, Will/Tammy; 355 words)
It's three o'clock in the morning when Will decides that there are few things in life more uncomfortable than being in bed with one woman and thinking about another. He looks down at Tammy, who's asleep next to him with one hand curled up under her head and a small smile on her face. He wonders what she's dreaming about. He hopes it isn't him.
Will slips out of bed as quietly as he can, careful not to wake her and dresses in the dark. He closes the bedroom door behind him and pads down the hall to the living room and it's wall of windows that look out into the unrelenting night. He pours himself a drink and stands at the window, and he thinks.
These are the things that Will knows for certain: he does not yet love Tammy, may never love Tammy, may not be capable of loving Tammy. He loves Alicia. He doesn't want to.
He knows it's the fear that he no longer knows how to do anything but love Alicia that keeps him up at night.
Will was twenty-two when he met Alicia, and he had a girlfriend that he loved as much as he knew how to do at twenty-two. But time and distance and Alicia's mere existence, all of those things had him falling in love with her before he even knew it had happened. He ended things with Natalie over Christmas, but by then it was too late. Alicia had met Peter and that had been that. Will was her friend. Peter was her lover. Will learned to live with it. He never stopped loving her.
And here they are, sixteen years later, and Alicia is still there, lodged firmly in his heart where she's always been. Sixteen years, different cities, her marriage and her children, and her never loving him back; none of these things ever made him stop loving Alicia. He doesn't know why he thought that Tammy could.
Will finishes his drink in the dark, and he goes back to bed. He closes his eyes and hopes that this time, when he dreams, it will not be of her.
that has no past (The Vampire Diaries; Matt/Caroline; 567 words)
The first time that Caroline realizes she loves Matt is when they're standing side by side at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes they'd used to make dinner. Matt passes her a plate and he smiles at her with his crooked grin, and Caroline's heart tumbles all the way o the floor.
She loves him. Can it really be that simple?
The plate falls through her hands and onto the floor, breaking into dozens of tiny pieces. Caroline stares at it in horror, hoping that it's not some kind of sign or a metaphor or something else terrible from English class that she can't remember right now.
"Are you okay?" Matt asks, nudging her with his elbow. "Care?"
She snaps back to attention. "Of course I am. You know me, I'm such a klutz," she babbles, aware that she is covering and doing it poorly. "I'm going to go to get the broom."
"Be careful," he warns. "You don't want to cut yourself."
No, she thinks to herself as she crosses the kitchen to pull the broom out of the pantry. She doesn't want to do that.
When Matt kisses her goodnight, she doesn't tell him that she loves him.
Later, after it all changes, Caroline will wish that she'd told him every time she could have. But she doesn't know now what she'll know then, and for now she's just a girl that doesn't want to end up broken on the kitchen floor.
She kisses him and thinks the words instead.
***
After he knows, Matt doesn't look her in the eye anymore. He doesn't look at her at all if he can help it, and it hurts Caroline more than anything has ever hurt her before. Elena and Bonnie tell her that all Matt needs is time and then he'll understand, that he'll accept her and love her for what she is, but Caroline knows better.
They didn't see the look in Matt's eyes when she said the words. They didn't see the way that he recoiled from her, from them. They didn't hear what Matt said, the things that he accused her of.
Caroline saw. And Caroline heard and Caroline knows that Matt will never love her the same way again.
The night they graduate from high school, Matt knocks on her front door.
"Matt," she says, flustered at the sight of him, standing there like it's six months ago and nothing has changed. "Did you want to come in?"
He shakes his head and his eyes are sad. "No," he says. "I just -- I'm leaving, Care. And I couldn't do it without saying goodbye."
Caroline just nods. She'd been expecting this somehow. After all, what was there left from him in Mystic Falls when he wasn't willing to forgive her for what she was? She wanted to be enough for him. She knows that she's not.
He touches her face and it takes every bit of will power she has not to lean into his hand. "You know I can't stay."
"That doesn't mean I want you to leave," she says, the words tripping from her lips before she can stop them. "I love you. Don't go."
"I love you, too," Matt says, smiling at her for the first time since that night. His hand slides back into her hair and he closes the space between them. When Matt kisses her goodbye, he is smiling.
It's something Caroline never forgets.
wrap me up (unfold me) (The Good Wife; Will/Alicia; 328 words)
In law school, Alicia used to fall asleep on Will's futon, her head tipped back against the thin cushion and books still piled high on her lap. When she'd wake in the morning, groggy and disoriented and stiff, the books would be gone and a ratty brown blanket would be tucked around her legs. Will would already have coffee made and she'd take the mug he passed her, careful not to burn her fingers on the hot ceramic. Careful not to burn her fingers on the spark from Will's skin.
She'd fold the blanket and thank him for his hospitality, and then leave, already lecturing herself about making bad decisions. Every time, she'd make a vow to herself that this would be the last time it happened. It was never the last time.
They graduated in the spring. Will moved to Baltimore and Alicia to Chicago. She married Peter. She forgot.
Sixteen years later, and they're working on a case that has everyone, partner and associate alike, spending nights on the couches in their offices. Alicia hasn't seen her apartment, Peter or her kids in days, and she hasn't been this tired since she was a first year law student, cramming for her first set of exams.
She falls asleep on the narrow couch in her office without meaning to, her laptop balanced precariously in her lap. She wakes to find her computer sitting safely on her desk, a cashmere throwing covering her knees. There's a tall paper cup from Starbucks on the desk, with a bright orange post-it stuck to the lid. She sets the blanket to the side and stands, crossing the room in just two steps, curious about what it says.
Drink me, it reads, in Will's dark, slanting hand writing, and Alicia smiles wistfully, letting the long forgotten memories wash over her. She tucks the notes into her top drawer and gets back to work.
In the morning, neither of them say a word. This time she doesn't forget.
don't want to walk away (The Good Wife; Cary/Kalinda; 370 words)
When the indictment against Kalinda comes down, Cary isn't allowed anywhere near the case. He knows why -- everyone knows why -- and he doesn't argue with Childs' decision. Cary has learned to pick his battles, and this is not one worth fighting.
And he has learned, too, to be cautious. He is careful to not be seen near Kalinda, with Alicia, with anyone from Lockhart Gardner, anyone that could be seen as a conflict of interest, as him trying to influence the case.
Because, of course, that is exactly what Cary is trying to do.
Cary likes to think that he would do this for anyone, because the indictment is crap -- pure political retribution, but the fact of the matter is that Cary knows that he wouldn't do this for anyone. He's doing it because it's Kalinda. He would do almost anything for Kalinda.
So he passes along what information he can through dummy email accounts and slipping Alicia papers in plain sight when they are facing off in court, and through a hundred other ways that he learned from Kalinda. When Alicia looks at him now it's with gratitude, not contempt, in her eyes, and it's hard not to let his heart soften against their shared love of the same woman.
The day the indictment is dismissed, Cary is working from home. Geneva sends him a text when it's finished. His lips curve up into a smile when he reads it, and he's still smiling when he answers the knock on his door. He'd been expecting this.
Kalinda is standing there, hands shoved into the pockets of a battered leather jacket. There's a vulnerability on her face that looks out of place, gratitude that he doesn't want to see, not from her. "Cary," she says, and he steps back to let her inside. She doesn't move. "Why'd you do it?" she asks.
Cary laughs, softly, and closes the space between them. He raises his hand to touch her face, strokes his thumb over her cheek. They have been here before. "Because," he says, and then he lowers his mouth and kisses her.
This time, it doesn't stop with a kiss. This time, it doesn't stop.
In the morning, his resignation is waiting on Childs' desk.
we could have had it all (The Social Network; Erica/Mark, Erica/Cameron; 424 words)
There are two things you should know about Erica’s relationship with Mark:
The first is that Erica never regrets her decision to end it. She never suffered from any delusions about happily-ever-after’s or long, white dresses, not where Mark was concerned, anyway. They were meant to be temporary, fleeting, the kind of relationship that college is all about. She knows this, and she has no regrets.
The second is that not having regrets doesn’t mean Erica doesn’t sometimes wonder what might have happened if she hadn’t broken up with him that night, in that way. She can’t predict when the thought will cross her mind; it happens most often when she’s logging onto Facebook, when she sees his name at the bottom of her computer screen, but it’s happened, too, when she’s on line at the grocery store or sitting in a dark movie theater, at bars, on dates, and late at night, in her bed, just when she’s drifting off to sleep.
This is one of the ways Erica imagines it happening instead:
They do not break up that night. Mark doesn’t go back to Kirkland, get drunk, and decide to publicly humiliate her for spite. He doesn’t get reprimanded by the Ad Board and he doesn’t meet the Winklevoss’. He doesn’t get punched by any of the Final Clubs.
Things limp along between them until the end of the semester, and she goes home to Albany for Christmas, while Mark goes home to Westchester. He does not call.
Erica doesn’t call either.
When they reunite in Boston, at the same bar where it actually ended, Mark is the one that says they should break up. Erica is surprised, but she isn’t sad, and she agrees with him, maybe a little too quickly. He looks suspicious, but he doesn’t say anything, just stands and offers her his hand to shake.
It’s the most polite break up of her entire life.
She goes out that night with her roommate, and she meets a tall, broad-shouldered boy who rows crew. His name is Cameron and she goes home with him, not just that night, but for the next two years, and then somehow it turns into the rest of her life.
She doesn’t think about Mark Zuckerberg again, not until she hears on the news about this website he’s founded called Facebook. She signs up for an account that night.
That is the last time Erica thinks about Mark. She marries Cameron in the spring, and she is happy.
It might have happened that way. It didn’t.
But sometimes Erica wonders. She doesn’t regret that either.
someone who believes (RPF; John Mayer/Taylor Swift; 247 words)
Even after it's over, John thinks about her. Truth be told, he might think about her more than he did when they were together. He thinks that was one of the reasons they didn't work, that maybe if he'd thought about her more, that if he'd understood -- but he didn't, and he doesn't believe in looking back.
But he thinks about her.
He thinks about the the curve of her hip and how soft her skin was under his hands. He thinks about her laugh and her smile and her curls, tumbling wildly down her back and them trailing over his skin. He thinks about her eyes, how they went soft whenever he said or did anything to make her think that he really cared. (He did care, just not how she wanted him to.) He thinks about how they went cold and flat when he told her that it was over. He thinks about her voice when she said his name all the times before the last one. (He doesn't think about that.)
He thinks about her.
He thinks about how she could have made him better if he'd let her. How she believed there was still something good about him, no matter how many times that he told her that had all been burned away years before he'd met her. How she almost made him believe in fairy tales and happy endings again.
He thinks about her, and wishes he knew how to stop.
The One Who Knows (The Good Wife; Alicia/Peter; 873 words)
The first divorce happens when Alicia is six, and she doesn't understand why her father isn't living at home with them anymore, why it's like he was never there at all. There are empty places where his coffee mug used to sit on the kitchen counter and where his shoes sat next to the door when he came home from work. No one comes into her room to read her bedtime stories anymore (even though she told him a hundred times that she was too old for them.)
She doesn't know how to ask where her father went. Owen cries at night when he thinks no one can hear him. She starts reading to him instead.
A month passes and then two, and another man's shoes sit by the door where her father's once went. His name is Tim and he has a scratchy beard and slips Alicia and Owen candy when their mother can't see him. Alicia knows that it's a bribe, but she takes the candy anyway. He's gone before Alicia and Owen can decide if they like him.
There's a new pair of shoes by the door and their mother tells them that they're moving to California in the summer.
***
Alicia loves her first step-father. He doesn't try to take her father's place and he doesn't try to make them into a family overnight. But he buys her books that he thinks she'll like and he makes sure that her mother remembers to come to school concerts and Alicia's ballet recitals and Owen's soccer games. He doesn't try to make them a family, but they become one anyway.
The marriage lasts for five years. The things that her step-father gave her last for much longer, a love of books and learning and a dream of becoming a lawyer when she grows up.
***
After California, they move to Florida. There's a new school and a new life and soon enough, a new step-father. Alicia is thirteen when her mother marries Greg, and Alicia hates him on sight. He's horrible to Owen, always telling him that he's not a real man, and he looks at Alicia in a way that makes her skin crawl.
She asks if she can go live with her father. Her mother says no. Alicia starts locking her door at night.
It's over almost before it began, though, just six months, a new record, and Alicia is glad when they leave for Texas.
(In college, when her friends plan road trips to Orlando, Alicia will pass up the chance to go with them. She and Peter will take the kids to Disney Land instead.)
***
It's in Texas that Alicia finishes high school, that she plots her escape from her mother's life. She only applies to schools in states where winter is real, knowing that there's no chance that her mother will follow. She chooses carefully; Penn, the University of Chicago, Sarah Lawrence, Yale, and Williams. Her mother tells her that she's aiming too high, but Alicia knows that she's got the grades and the test scores to get in almost anywhere, and when acceptances come back, she has her pick of schools.
She chooses Penn and in the fall when it's time to say goodbye, the only one that matters is to her brother.
She hugs him tight, hating to leave him alone with their mother and number four, as they've taken to calling their latest step-father. "Leave as soon as you can," she says, whispering it into his ear where their mother can't hear.
Owen nods against her throat, and Alicia feels tears prick at the corners of her eyes.
She boards a plane for Philadelphia and she doesn't look back. When she lands, her life begins.
***
College changes her. It opens up new worlds of friendship and trust, things she'd never let herself believe in before, knowing they could be snatched away at a moment's notice. She learns to share herself with other people, to have them share themselves with her in return. She always holds a piece of herself back. She falls in love with a boy named Daniel, but can't love him the way that he deserves. She knows why, but she doesn't know how to make herself better.
She wants to be better.
She majors in political science and minors in history, and she starts picking out law schools her junior year. When she tours Georgetown in August, the air thick with humidity and heat, her tour guide is named Peter Florrick.
***
It will be a year and a half before Alicia sees him again, and they will be in a crowded bar, both there with other people.
But Alicia will look at him and he will look at her, and they will meet somewhere in the middle. He will say, "I know you" and she will agree, and before she leaves the bar that night, Alicia will understand that she's been looking her whole life for the answers to questions that don't even exist.
She will leave the bar that night, and for the first time in her life, she will know.
***
On a cold February morning, she will sit in a divorce lawyer's office, and she will wonder if it was all a lie.
one small step (The Vampire Diaries; Bonnie/Jeremy; 205 words)
In the twelve years that Bonnie has been best friends with Elena, she has walked the path from the front door to Elena's room more times than she can count. She knows it by heart -- the six steps it takes to go from the door to the stairs, the twelve stairs themselves and the creak the fifth one makes if you step on it wrong. From there, Elena's door is just three short steps away, the first one on the right.
Bonnie could walk it in her sleep, but the first time she's there to see Jeremy and not Elena, Bonnie stands, paralyzed, at the top of the stairs for she doesn't know how long.
It's just a few short steps, but it feels like so much more. It is so much more.
She puts one foot in front of the other and makes herself walk. There are three steps to Elena's door and then another seven to Jeremy's, and she counts each of them off in her head.
Bonnie knocks on the open door.
Jeremy looks up, a grin spreading lightning fast across his face. "Get in here already," he says, holding out a hand.
She steps inside. She starts counting from one.
It's three o'clock in the morning when Will decides that there are few things in life more uncomfortable than being in bed with one woman and thinking about another. He looks down at Tammy, who's asleep next to him with one hand curled up under her head and a small smile on her face. He wonders what she's dreaming about. He hopes it isn't him.
Will slips out of bed as quietly as he can, careful not to wake her and dresses in the dark. He closes the bedroom door behind him and pads down the hall to the living room and it's wall of windows that look out into the unrelenting night. He pours himself a drink and stands at the window, and he thinks.
These are the things that Will knows for certain: he does not yet love Tammy, may never love Tammy, may not be capable of loving Tammy. He loves Alicia. He doesn't want to.
He knows it's the fear that he no longer knows how to do anything but love Alicia that keeps him up at night.
Will was twenty-two when he met Alicia, and he had a girlfriend that he loved as much as he knew how to do at twenty-two. But time and distance and Alicia's mere existence, all of those things had him falling in love with her before he even knew it had happened. He ended things with Natalie over Christmas, but by then it was too late. Alicia had met Peter and that had been that. Will was her friend. Peter was her lover. Will learned to live with it. He never stopped loving her.
And here they are, sixteen years later, and Alicia is still there, lodged firmly in his heart where she's always been. Sixteen years, different cities, her marriage and her children, and her never loving him back; none of these things ever made him stop loving Alicia. He doesn't know why he thought that Tammy could.
Will finishes his drink in the dark, and he goes back to bed. He closes his eyes and hopes that this time, when he dreams, it will not be of her.
that has no past (The Vampire Diaries; Matt/Caroline; 567 words)
The first time that Caroline realizes she loves Matt is when they're standing side by side at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes they'd used to make dinner. Matt passes her a plate and he smiles at her with his crooked grin, and Caroline's heart tumbles all the way o the floor.
She loves him. Can it really be that simple?
The plate falls through her hands and onto the floor, breaking into dozens of tiny pieces. Caroline stares at it in horror, hoping that it's not some kind of sign or a metaphor or something else terrible from English class that she can't remember right now.
"Are you okay?" Matt asks, nudging her with his elbow. "Care?"
She snaps back to attention. "Of course I am. You know me, I'm such a klutz," she babbles, aware that she is covering and doing it poorly. "I'm going to go to get the broom."
"Be careful," he warns. "You don't want to cut yourself."
No, she thinks to herself as she crosses the kitchen to pull the broom out of the pantry. She doesn't want to do that.
When Matt kisses her goodnight, she doesn't tell him that she loves him.
Later, after it all changes, Caroline will wish that she'd told him every time she could have. But she doesn't know now what she'll know then, and for now she's just a girl that doesn't want to end up broken on the kitchen floor.
She kisses him and thinks the words instead.
***
After he knows, Matt doesn't look her in the eye anymore. He doesn't look at her at all if he can help it, and it hurts Caroline more than anything has ever hurt her before. Elena and Bonnie tell her that all Matt needs is time and then he'll understand, that he'll accept her and love her for what she is, but Caroline knows better.
They didn't see the look in Matt's eyes when she said the words. They didn't see the way that he recoiled from her, from them. They didn't hear what Matt said, the things that he accused her of.
Caroline saw. And Caroline heard and Caroline knows that Matt will never love her the same way again.
The night they graduate from high school, Matt knocks on her front door.
"Matt," she says, flustered at the sight of him, standing there like it's six months ago and nothing has changed. "Did you want to come in?"
He shakes his head and his eyes are sad. "No," he says. "I just -- I'm leaving, Care. And I couldn't do it without saying goodbye."
Caroline just nods. She'd been expecting this somehow. After all, what was there left from him in Mystic Falls when he wasn't willing to forgive her for what she was? She wanted to be enough for him. She knows that she's not.
He touches her face and it takes every bit of will power she has not to lean into his hand. "You know I can't stay."
"That doesn't mean I want you to leave," she says, the words tripping from her lips before she can stop them. "I love you. Don't go."
"I love you, too," Matt says, smiling at her for the first time since that night. His hand slides back into her hair and he closes the space between them. When Matt kisses her goodbye, he is smiling.
It's something Caroline never forgets.
wrap me up (unfold me) (The Good Wife; Will/Alicia; 328 words)
In law school, Alicia used to fall asleep on Will's futon, her head tipped back against the thin cushion and books still piled high on her lap. When she'd wake in the morning, groggy and disoriented and stiff, the books would be gone and a ratty brown blanket would be tucked around her legs. Will would already have coffee made and she'd take the mug he passed her, careful not to burn her fingers on the hot ceramic. Careful not to burn her fingers on the spark from Will's skin.
She'd fold the blanket and thank him for his hospitality, and then leave, already lecturing herself about making bad decisions. Every time, she'd make a vow to herself that this would be the last time it happened. It was never the last time.
They graduated in the spring. Will moved to Baltimore and Alicia to Chicago. She married Peter. She forgot.
Sixteen years later, and they're working on a case that has everyone, partner and associate alike, spending nights on the couches in their offices. Alicia hasn't seen her apartment, Peter or her kids in days, and she hasn't been this tired since she was a first year law student, cramming for her first set of exams.
She falls asleep on the narrow couch in her office without meaning to, her laptop balanced precariously in her lap. She wakes to find her computer sitting safely on her desk, a cashmere throwing covering her knees. There's a tall paper cup from Starbucks on the desk, with a bright orange post-it stuck to the lid. She sets the blanket to the side and stands, crossing the room in just two steps, curious about what it says.
Drink me, it reads, in Will's dark, slanting hand writing, and Alicia smiles wistfully, letting the long forgotten memories wash over her. She tucks the notes into her top drawer and gets back to work.
In the morning, neither of them say a word. This time she doesn't forget.
don't want to walk away (The Good Wife; Cary/Kalinda; 370 words)
When the indictment against Kalinda comes down, Cary isn't allowed anywhere near the case. He knows why -- everyone knows why -- and he doesn't argue with Childs' decision. Cary has learned to pick his battles, and this is not one worth fighting.
And he has learned, too, to be cautious. He is careful to not be seen near Kalinda, with Alicia, with anyone from Lockhart Gardner, anyone that could be seen as a conflict of interest, as him trying to influence the case.
Because, of course, that is exactly what Cary is trying to do.
Cary likes to think that he would do this for anyone, because the indictment is crap -- pure political retribution, but the fact of the matter is that Cary knows that he wouldn't do this for anyone. He's doing it because it's Kalinda. He would do almost anything for Kalinda.
So he passes along what information he can through dummy email accounts and slipping Alicia papers in plain sight when they are facing off in court, and through a hundred other ways that he learned from Kalinda. When Alicia looks at him now it's with gratitude, not contempt, in her eyes, and it's hard not to let his heart soften against their shared love of the same woman.
The day the indictment is dismissed, Cary is working from home. Geneva sends him a text when it's finished. His lips curve up into a smile when he reads it, and he's still smiling when he answers the knock on his door. He'd been expecting this.
Kalinda is standing there, hands shoved into the pockets of a battered leather jacket. There's a vulnerability on her face that looks out of place, gratitude that he doesn't want to see, not from her. "Cary," she says, and he steps back to let her inside. She doesn't move. "Why'd you do it?" she asks.
Cary laughs, softly, and closes the space between them. He raises his hand to touch her face, strokes his thumb over her cheek. They have been here before. "Because," he says, and then he lowers his mouth and kisses her.
This time, it doesn't stop with a kiss. This time, it doesn't stop.
In the morning, his resignation is waiting on Childs' desk.
we could have had it all (The Social Network; Erica/Mark, Erica/Cameron; 424 words)
There are two things you should know about Erica’s relationship with Mark:
The first is that Erica never regrets her decision to end it. She never suffered from any delusions about happily-ever-after’s or long, white dresses, not where Mark was concerned, anyway. They were meant to be temporary, fleeting, the kind of relationship that college is all about. She knows this, and she has no regrets.
The second is that not having regrets doesn’t mean Erica doesn’t sometimes wonder what might have happened if she hadn’t broken up with him that night, in that way. She can’t predict when the thought will cross her mind; it happens most often when she’s logging onto Facebook, when she sees his name at the bottom of her computer screen, but it’s happened, too, when she’s on line at the grocery store or sitting in a dark movie theater, at bars, on dates, and late at night, in her bed, just when she’s drifting off to sleep.
This is one of the ways Erica imagines it happening instead:
They do not break up that night. Mark doesn’t go back to Kirkland, get drunk, and decide to publicly humiliate her for spite. He doesn’t get reprimanded by the Ad Board and he doesn’t meet the Winklevoss’. He doesn’t get punched by any of the Final Clubs.
Things limp along between them until the end of the semester, and she goes home to Albany for Christmas, while Mark goes home to Westchester. He does not call.
Erica doesn’t call either.
When they reunite in Boston, at the same bar where it actually ended, Mark is the one that says they should break up. Erica is surprised, but she isn’t sad, and she agrees with him, maybe a little too quickly. He looks suspicious, but he doesn’t say anything, just stands and offers her his hand to shake.
It’s the most polite break up of her entire life.
She goes out that night with her roommate, and she meets a tall, broad-shouldered boy who rows crew. His name is Cameron and she goes home with him, not just that night, but for the next two years, and then somehow it turns into the rest of her life.
She doesn’t think about Mark Zuckerberg again, not until she hears on the news about this website he’s founded called Facebook. She signs up for an account that night.
That is the last time Erica thinks about Mark. She marries Cameron in the spring, and she is happy.
It might have happened that way. It didn’t.
But sometimes Erica wonders. She doesn’t regret that either.
someone who believes (RPF; John Mayer/Taylor Swift; 247 words)
Even after it's over, John thinks about her. Truth be told, he might think about her more than he did when they were together. He thinks that was one of the reasons they didn't work, that maybe if he'd thought about her more, that if he'd understood -- but he didn't, and he doesn't believe in looking back.
But he thinks about her.
He thinks about the the curve of her hip and how soft her skin was under his hands. He thinks about her laugh and her smile and her curls, tumbling wildly down her back and them trailing over his skin. He thinks about her eyes, how they went soft whenever he said or did anything to make her think that he really cared. (He did care, just not how she wanted him to.) He thinks about how they went cold and flat when he told her that it was over. He thinks about her voice when she said his name all the times before the last one. (He doesn't think about that.)
He thinks about her.
He thinks about how she could have made him better if he'd let her. How she believed there was still something good about him, no matter how many times that he told her that had all been burned away years before he'd met her. How she almost made him believe in fairy tales and happy endings again.
He thinks about her, and wishes he knew how to stop.
The One Who Knows (The Good Wife; Alicia/Peter; 873 words)
The first divorce happens when Alicia is six, and she doesn't understand why her father isn't living at home with them anymore, why it's like he was never there at all. There are empty places where his coffee mug used to sit on the kitchen counter and where his shoes sat next to the door when he came home from work. No one comes into her room to read her bedtime stories anymore (even though she told him a hundred times that she was too old for them.)
She doesn't know how to ask where her father went. Owen cries at night when he thinks no one can hear him. She starts reading to him instead.
A month passes and then two, and another man's shoes sit by the door where her father's once went. His name is Tim and he has a scratchy beard and slips Alicia and Owen candy when their mother can't see him. Alicia knows that it's a bribe, but she takes the candy anyway. He's gone before Alicia and Owen can decide if they like him.
There's a new pair of shoes by the door and their mother tells them that they're moving to California in the summer.
***
Alicia loves her first step-father. He doesn't try to take her father's place and he doesn't try to make them into a family overnight. But he buys her books that he thinks she'll like and he makes sure that her mother remembers to come to school concerts and Alicia's ballet recitals and Owen's soccer games. He doesn't try to make them a family, but they become one anyway.
The marriage lasts for five years. The things that her step-father gave her last for much longer, a love of books and learning and a dream of becoming a lawyer when she grows up.
***
After California, they move to Florida. There's a new school and a new life and soon enough, a new step-father. Alicia is thirteen when her mother marries Greg, and Alicia hates him on sight. He's horrible to Owen, always telling him that he's not a real man, and he looks at Alicia in a way that makes her skin crawl.
She asks if she can go live with her father. Her mother says no. Alicia starts locking her door at night.
It's over almost before it began, though, just six months, a new record, and Alicia is glad when they leave for Texas.
(In college, when her friends plan road trips to Orlando, Alicia will pass up the chance to go with them. She and Peter will take the kids to Disney Land instead.)
***
It's in Texas that Alicia finishes high school, that she plots her escape from her mother's life. She only applies to schools in states where winter is real, knowing that there's no chance that her mother will follow. She chooses carefully; Penn, the University of Chicago, Sarah Lawrence, Yale, and Williams. Her mother tells her that she's aiming too high, but Alicia knows that she's got the grades and the test scores to get in almost anywhere, and when acceptances come back, she has her pick of schools.
She chooses Penn and in the fall when it's time to say goodbye, the only one that matters is to her brother.
She hugs him tight, hating to leave him alone with their mother and number four, as they've taken to calling their latest step-father. "Leave as soon as you can," she says, whispering it into his ear where their mother can't hear.
Owen nods against her throat, and Alicia feels tears prick at the corners of her eyes.
She boards a plane for Philadelphia and she doesn't look back. When she lands, her life begins.
***
College changes her. It opens up new worlds of friendship and trust, things she'd never let herself believe in before, knowing they could be snatched away at a moment's notice. She learns to share herself with other people, to have them share themselves with her in return. She always holds a piece of herself back. She falls in love with a boy named Daniel, but can't love him the way that he deserves. She knows why, but she doesn't know how to make herself better.
She wants to be better.
She majors in political science and minors in history, and she starts picking out law schools her junior year. When she tours Georgetown in August, the air thick with humidity and heat, her tour guide is named Peter Florrick.
***
It will be a year and a half before Alicia sees him again, and they will be in a crowded bar, both there with other people.
But Alicia will look at him and he will look at her, and they will meet somewhere in the middle. He will say, "I know you" and she will agree, and before she leaves the bar that night, Alicia will understand that she's been looking her whole life for the answers to questions that don't even exist.
She will leave the bar that night, and for the first time in her life, she will know.
***
On a cold February morning, she will sit in a divorce lawyer's office, and she will wonder if it was all a lie.
one small step (The Vampire Diaries; Bonnie/Jeremy; 205 words)
In the twelve years that Bonnie has been best friends with Elena, she has walked the path from the front door to Elena's room more times than she can count. She knows it by heart -- the six steps it takes to go from the door to the stairs, the twelve stairs themselves and the creak the fifth one makes if you step on it wrong. From there, Elena's door is just three short steps away, the first one on the right.
Bonnie could walk it in her sleep, but the first time she's there to see Jeremy and not Elena, Bonnie stands, paralyzed, at the top of the stairs for she doesn't know how long.
It's just a few short steps, but it feels like so much more. It is so much more.
She puts one foot in front of the other and makes herself walk. There are three steps to Elena's door and then another seven to Jeremy's, and she counts each of them off in her head.
Bonnie knocks on the open door.
Jeremy looks up, a grin spreading lightning fast across his face. "Get in here already," he says, holding out a hand.
She steps inside. She starts counting from one.