(no subject)
Title: Deliberate Belief
Rating: PG-13. It's kinda angsty.
Pairing: Mark/Addison.
Summary: The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. - Conrad
Addison had a headache. She ate dinner with a headache, went to bed with a headache and woke up with the same headache. It blurred her vision on occasion, put halos around strangers if the lighting was right and brought her tolerance for anything she loved or hated down to zero. Silence bothered her, for their apartment was never truly silent and white noise transformed from a mere annoyance to an ear-splitting physically painful experience. Noise bothered her, same reason. Darkness was an ineffective soothing tactic, creating shapes and shadows that moved on their own accord. Light hurt her eyes. She wanted people around, comforting, caring, contact, but wanted them gone for the silence whose merits she blatantly lied. Suggestions of painkillers were brushed off under the explanation that they had not worked for the first eight hours and it was unlikely that they were going to find the inclination to start.
Addison had a headache. And it was hot. That New York kind of hot, sticky and sweaty and noisy with buzzing air conditioning units in overdrive and unavoidable eavesdropping of conversations outside as gossipy women with nothing to do tried in vain to determine whether it was cooler inside or out. Their fan creaked and it grated on her, but the only way to stop it was to find a shoe and throw it carefully at the center and finding a shoe required a change in cerebral altitude. No one had bothered with socks in weeks and shoes in days unless necessary and extensive movement was out of the question. She could not remember the last time she wore pants and had no idea when her body was last clothed in anything more than a bra and underwear. The other occupants certainly did not complain, but acting upon those desires was an activity to be postponed for cooler days.
Addison had a headache. She opened her eyes for the first time in what felt like hours, and what might have been hours, and looked overhead at the ceiling fan. She lay down on the floor around the same time as she closed her eyes with the hope her back would shift into proper alignment again but found the floor cool and felt it best to stay. The fan went in circles, around and around, thumping in time to its own even heartbeat. She felt stoned. Sluggish, disconnected, fascinated by inanity and completely enthralled by something she wanted to stop.
“You’re on the floor.” A familiar voice came from above and to the left. Even if she wanted to turn to look at him, she could not. The heat and the humidity and the headache kept her attention firmly on the fan. She recognized his voice, knew who it was, the deeper tones and sultry edge gave him away.
She nodded hard in her mind, hoped he received the image. “I am on the floor, Mark.” Part of her desperately wanted him to sit down, to lie next to her, close to her, and find the absurd calm of the fan, but the rest of her wanted him gone, to leave her in peace, to let as much air around her move as much as possible. Rumors of the illegitimacy of a neighbor’s hair color wafted up from the street, accented by a cacophony of honks and curses and bicycle bells, the buzz of abused air conditioners connecting the city together.
“You know,” he stayed standing and half of her cried and half of her clapped, “if you were on a bed and if you were Martin Sheen, you’d look remarkably like Martin Sheen in the beginning of Apocalypse, Now.” Their part of the city had been thrown behind a filter of gritty, grainy yellow. It looked dirty, it felt dirty, it was dirty, it was immense and overwhelming and the air so thick it was claustrophobic. Showers provided minimal temperature relief and the sweat began again as soon as the towel finished.
She decided the pain was worth it and rolled her eyes from their fixed spot on the ceiling over to where he was still standing. “What.” Even had her headache not been an omnipresent problem, the excruciating heat muddled her brain to the point where she understood that the children outside giggling loudly about burning ants with magnifying glasses could do so, though she could not explain how.
He sat down. “Where they’re playing that Doors song and the beat of the ceiling fan matches up with the beat of a helicopter whatever and he opens his eyes and says ‘Shit, I’m still in Saigon.’” He wanted to reach out, touch her hair, touch her face, give her a sign, a sign of anything.
“I know what you’re talking about. The song is ‘The End,’ and I’ve seen the movie. What about me on the floor reminds you of smelling napalm in the morning?” She rubbed at her eye, unseen grains of dirt making their way into every bit of her body.
Silence from the two of them. A hopscotch game became too violent and the children called a break for a rush inside for bandages. Gossip changed from hair color to infidelity to the church sermon two Sundays ago. The fan ceased its creaking on its own, replaced by a steady cadence of thumping as the blades cut through the solid air.
“Why are you still with Derek?” He lay down on his side, propping his head up on his hand though he knew the palm print would drip with sweat in a short while. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail, its weight too much on her bare back for this climate, but its once perfect form loosened and strands and chunks began to fall out long before he arrived. Careful to avoid touching her skin, he tucked a few pieces away.
Her only response was to close her eyes again and clench her jaw for a few seconds before the pain caused by the effort outweighed its outward intent.
“He’s supposed to be home, Addison. But he’s at the hospital, in air conditioning, taking care of other people when you’re the one he needs to take care of.” He silently added that he was losing, too. Their once all-powerful and invincible group of three was dissolving at a rate far too unfair for the two who had no control.
She briefly considered allowing herself to cry, wondering if the hot tears would be cooler than her cheeks. “I don’t need to be taken care of, Mark.” She could not win, physically; holding in the tears for the sake of appearances only increased the pain in her head and allowing the tears to fall would invoke a requisite and well-practiced dance of movement and bodies pressing against one another.
“So I should pretend that you are not lying on the floor in your underwear with an excruciating headache that has plagued you for two and half days, and that you are not lying on the floor in your underwear staring at a ceiling fan while trying your best not to move even a finger.”
She kept her eyes closed, choosing to hear and feel the world around her rather than see it. Life behind her eyelids moved quickly, ten times faster than it did outside her realm of half-darkness. People running frantically in and out of buildings, up and down stairs, stop signs and traffic lights mere pleasantries, birds hopping ridiculously, the sun moving along its path with unbelievable speed until it all slowed down and gradually came back to normal. She opened her eyes and it was dark. The man next to her was elsewhere and in his place sat a glass of warm water and a bottle of aspirin. She took four and sat up.
Greasy yellow had been replaced by overcast purple and shadows, the outer layer of stickiness picked away, and the air promised to drop three degrees if virtues snuck out of hiding.
Shouting, only one voice, filtered through to her ears as she slid over to the window to watch the world, catch up on kickball scores.
“And while you’re sitting in an air-conditioned hospital, your girlfriend is lying here on the floor in her underwear trying her best to not overheat while she has a three-day old headache that won’t go away...You don’t have to be there, Derek...You do not have to be God, you do not have to play God and you are not God. Come home. Come home to Addison...Dammit, Derek, you don’t have to touch her to make her feel better, I though I was the one who was supposed to be all about sex...Don’t you...bastard.” He hung up the phone, violently, and she heard him mentally count to fifteen before he came back in.
He sat down next to her, joining her in her observations of the outside world. “How’s your head?” A quiet whisper, as if to make up for the shouting that woke her.
She shrugged. “I’m upright.” She felt herself wanting to cheer as the youngest girl in the game scored a home run and ran around the makeshift bases as if she owned the universe. Not bothering to ask what they already knew, she sighed. “I quit.”
“What?” He put an experimental hand on her back, wanting to be comforting but not wanting to be too hot or too forward. She didn’t flinch, so he stayed still.
Addison’s headache came back, she tried to will it away and failed. “I’ve given him every opportunity to stop being a moron. I’ve yelled at him, you’ve yelled at him, hell half the people outside right now have probably yelled at him because they’re tired of hearing us yell at him. And if he can’t pull himself away from saving the lives of strangers to make his girlfriend smile,” she sniffled and looked up and to the right, holding her tears at bay, “then I’m done with him.”
Cicadas buzzed in the small trees and the few lightning bugs brave enough to test the city flashed in time with each other. High-pitched giggles and disappointed shouts mixed with the gossipy women who never stopped being gossipy to create a bearable concoction of white noise, made even better by the faint rumbling in the distance that promised relief.
She shivered, still only in her underwear and a bra and the congealing sweat from the afternoon began to cool off on her skin. The nearest shirt was one of his and he smiled as she put it on and buttoned a few buttons to hold it in place. He tugged her into his arms as the first drops of rain fell down to excited laughter from the streets and relieved barking from porches. She cuddled into him and began to cry. He thought it was because her relationship was over and she let him think that because she needed him so badly she couldn’t imagine hurting him.
She cried because she hated Derek: hated him for making her love him so much that, even as their relationship ended, he was the one she wanted to hold her.
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
Rating: PG-13. It's kinda angsty.
Pairing: Mark/Addison.
Summary: The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. - Conrad
Addison had a headache. She ate dinner with a headache, went to bed with a headache and woke up with the same headache. It blurred her vision on occasion, put halos around strangers if the lighting was right and brought her tolerance for anything she loved or hated down to zero. Silence bothered her, for their apartment was never truly silent and white noise transformed from a mere annoyance to an ear-splitting physically painful experience. Noise bothered her, same reason. Darkness was an ineffective soothing tactic, creating shapes and shadows that moved on their own accord. Light hurt her eyes. She wanted people around, comforting, caring, contact, but wanted them gone for the silence whose merits she blatantly lied. Suggestions of painkillers were brushed off under the explanation that they had not worked for the first eight hours and it was unlikely that they were going to find the inclination to start.
Addison had a headache. And it was hot. That New York kind of hot, sticky and sweaty and noisy with buzzing air conditioning units in overdrive and unavoidable eavesdropping of conversations outside as gossipy women with nothing to do tried in vain to determine whether it was cooler inside or out. Their fan creaked and it grated on her, but the only way to stop it was to find a shoe and throw it carefully at the center and finding a shoe required a change in cerebral altitude. No one had bothered with socks in weeks and shoes in days unless necessary and extensive movement was out of the question. She could not remember the last time she wore pants and had no idea when her body was last clothed in anything more than a bra and underwear. The other occupants certainly did not complain, but acting upon those desires was an activity to be postponed for cooler days.
Addison had a headache. She opened her eyes for the first time in what felt like hours, and what might have been hours, and looked overhead at the ceiling fan. She lay down on the floor around the same time as she closed her eyes with the hope her back would shift into proper alignment again but found the floor cool and felt it best to stay. The fan went in circles, around and around, thumping in time to its own even heartbeat. She felt stoned. Sluggish, disconnected, fascinated by inanity and completely enthralled by something she wanted to stop.
“You’re on the floor.” A familiar voice came from above and to the left. Even if she wanted to turn to look at him, she could not. The heat and the humidity and the headache kept her attention firmly on the fan. She recognized his voice, knew who it was, the deeper tones and sultry edge gave him away.
She nodded hard in her mind, hoped he received the image. “I am on the floor, Mark.” Part of her desperately wanted him to sit down, to lie next to her, close to her, and find the absurd calm of the fan, but the rest of her wanted him gone, to leave her in peace, to let as much air around her move as much as possible. Rumors of the illegitimacy of a neighbor’s hair color wafted up from the street, accented by a cacophony of honks and curses and bicycle bells, the buzz of abused air conditioners connecting the city together.
“You know,” he stayed standing and half of her cried and half of her clapped, “if you were on a bed and if you were Martin Sheen, you’d look remarkably like Martin Sheen in the beginning of Apocalypse, Now.” Their part of the city had been thrown behind a filter of gritty, grainy yellow. It looked dirty, it felt dirty, it was dirty, it was immense and overwhelming and the air so thick it was claustrophobic. Showers provided minimal temperature relief and the sweat began again as soon as the towel finished.
She decided the pain was worth it and rolled her eyes from their fixed spot on the ceiling over to where he was still standing. “What.” Even had her headache not been an omnipresent problem, the excruciating heat muddled her brain to the point where she understood that the children outside giggling loudly about burning ants with magnifying glasses could do so, though she could not explain how.
He sat down. “Where they’re playing that Doors song and the beat of the ceiling fan matches up with the beat of a helicopter whatever and he opens his eyes and says ‘Shit, I’m still in Saigon.’” He wanted to reach out, touch her hair, touch her face, give her a sign, a sign of anything.
“I know what you’re talking about. The song is ‘The End,’ and I’ve seen the movie. What about me on the floor reminds you of smelling napalm in the morning?” She rubbed at her eye, unseen grains of dirt making their way into every bit of her body.
Silence from the two of them. A hopscotch game became too violent and the children called a break for a rush inside for bandages. Gossip changed from hair color to infidelity to the church sermon two Sundays ago. The fan ceased its creaking on its own, replaced by a steady cadence of thumping as the blades cut through the solid air.
“Why are you still with Derek?” He lay down on his side, propping his head up on his hand though he knew the palm print would drip with sweat in a short while. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail, its weight too much on her bare back for this climate, but its once perfect form loosened and strands and chunks began to fall out long before he arrived. Careful to avoid touching her skin, he tucked a few pieces away.
Her only response was to close her eyes again and clench her jaw for a few seconds before the pain caused by the effort outweighed its outward intent.
“He’s supposed to be home, Addison. But he’s at the hospital, in air conditioning, taking care of other people when you’re the one he needs to take care of.” He silently added that he was losing, too. Their once all-powerful and invincible group of three was dissolving at a rate far too unfair for the two who had no control.
She briefly considered allowing herself to cry, wondering if the hot tears would be cooler than her cheeks. “I don’t need to be taken care of, Mark.” She could not win, physically; holding in the tears for the sake of appearances only increased the pain in her head and allowing the tears to fall would invoke a requisite and well-practiced dance of movement and bodies pressing against one another.
“So I should pretend that you are not lying on the floor in your underwear with an excruciating headache that has plagued you for two and half days, and that you are not lying on the floor in your underwear staring at a ceiling fan while trying your best not to move even a finger.”
She kept her eyes closed, choosing to hear and feel the world around her rather than see it. Life behind her eyelids moved quickly, ten times faster than it did outside her realm of half-darkness. People running frantically in and out of buildings, up and down stairs, stop signs and traffic lights mere pleasantries, birds hopping ridiculously, the sun moving along its path with unbelievable speed until it all slowed down and gradually came back to normal. She opened her eyes and it was dark. The man next to her was elsewhere and in his place sat a glass of warm water and a bottle of aspirin. She took four and sat up.
Greasy yellow had been replaced by overcast purple and shadows, the outer layer of stickiness picked away, and the air promised to drop three degrees if virtues snuck out of hiding.
Shouting, only one voice, filtered through to her ears as she slid over to the window to watch the world, catch up on kickball scores.
“And while you’re sitting in an air-conditioned hospital, your girlfriend is lying here on the floor in her underwear trying her best to not overheat while she has a three-day old headache that won’t go away...You don’t have to be there, Derek...You do not have to be God, you do not have to play God and you are not God. Come home. Come home to Addison...Dammit, Derek, you don’t have to touch her to make her feel better, I though I was the one who was supposed to be all about sex...Don’t you...bastard.” He hung up the phone, violently, and she heard him mentally count to fifteen before he came back in.
He sat down next to her, joining her in her observations of the outside world. “How’s your head?” A quiet whisper, as if to make up for the shouting that woke her.
She shrugged. “I’m upright.” She felt herself wanting to cheer as the youngest girl in the game scored a home run and ran around the makeshift bases as if she owned the universe. Not bothering to ask what they already knew, she sighed. “I quit.”
“What?” He put an experimental hand on her back, wanting to be comforting but not wanting to be too hot or too forward. She didn’t flinch, so he stayed still.
Addison’s headache came back, she tried to will it away and failed. “I’ve given him every opportunity to stop being a moron. I’ve yelled at him, you’ve yelled at him, hell half the people outside right now have probably yelled at him because they’re tired of hearing us yell at him. And if he can’t pull himself away from saving the lives of strangers to make his girlfriend smile,” she sniffled and looked up and to the right, holding her tears at bay, “then I’m done with him.”
Cicadas buzzed in the small trees and the few lightning bugs brave enough to test the city flashed in time with each other. High-pitched giggles and disappointed shouts mixed with the gossipy women who never stopped being gossipy to create a bearable concoction of white noise, made even better by the faint rumbling in the distance that promised relief.
She shivered, still only in her underwear and a bra and the congealing sweat from the afternoon began to cool off on her skin. The nearest shirt was one of his and he smiled as she put it on and buttoned a few buttons to hold it in place. He tugged her into his arms as the first drops of rain fell down to excited laughter from the streets and relieved barking from porches. She cuddled into him and began to cry. He thought it was because her relationship was over and she let him think that because she needed him so badly she couldn’t imagine hurting him.
She cried because she hated Derek: hated him for making her love him so much that, even as their relationship ended, he was the one she wanted to hold her.
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.